No Rest for the Weary
by scripting life
Summary: *Finally Complete!* When she woke that morning, she'd been filled with joy and hope and the knowledge that they had their whole lives in front of them. She knows this for a naïve dream when she wakes up that night to blood on her hands and a gun to her head. S5 speculation.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: __Okay, so I know the proper phrase is "no rest for the wicked" (stop looking at me like I'm culturally illiterate), but in this instance, _weary _fits better, so I went with the bastardized version of the idiom. Of course, "no rest for the wicked" itself is a modified version of the Biblical verse from whence it comes, so why don't we all just say that nothing is original and call it pat? Mmkay?_

_Anyhow, I'm joining the fun with this post-"Always"/Season 5 speculation. I don't think I've seen this angle tackled yet, so I figured I might as well get it out there before someone else writes it first. :D This should be a fairly short multi-parter, but to be honest, I haven't written much beyond this first chapter, so we'll see where the muse takes me._

_Please let me know what you think! Thanks!_

_**EDIT 6.14.12: Larger version of the cover art can be found on my Tumblr account, scripting-life.**_

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Spoilers: Basically everything is game.

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Disclaimer: ABC Studios likes to torture us with long hiatuses. Andrew Marlowe and his team like to torture us with amazing writing. Together, they've provided us with the epitome of an awesome show. Strangely enough, I'm content to let them hold the reins (and the rights) to _Castle_. All this to say, I write solely for recreational purposes and make no profit off of the brilliance of the above-mentioned.

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_**No Rest for the Weary**_

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Chapter One

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Blood. It's everywhere.

Its acrid scent is in her nose, its slickness on her hands, and its caustic iron bite in her mouth. It pumps sluggishly through her veins, fueling the throbbing welts and bruises that ornament her body like a morbid painting.

It's all around her, the blood.

Some of it is hers, but most of it isn't, and that's what drives her to the edge.

Most of the blood is _his_.

…

_The first thing Kate notices when she returns to the land of the living is that her neck tickles. Not bothering to open her eyes, she lifts a lazy hand to swat at the irritant. She misses, and she hears—feels—the shaking rumble of a deep chuckle next to her._

_She expects a moment of disorientation, a moment she would need to remember where she is and what she has done, but instead there is just this overwhelming sense of finally being where she's always needed to be. Home. _

_An irrepressible smile spreads across her lips, and she turns her face further into the pillow to hide it. _

_"Shut up, Castle."_

_She feels his mouth at the nape of her neck again, and this time there's a grin pressed against her skin. _

_"Are you always this grumpy in the mornings?" he murmurs, his lips tickling the soft tufts of baby hair at the base of her head, the tip of his tongue teasing the sensitive skin of her neck and flooding her with delicious warmth._

_"I don't know. You gonna try and find out?" she drawls, impressed with how steady her voice comes out even though he's doing things to her that make her restless with want._

_"Hell yes," he growls close to her ear, the searing heat of his breath sending shivers down her spine and setting afire the nerves fluttering in her belly._

_It doesn't matter that they'd stayed up most of the night exploring each other's bodies and losing themselves in the passion that has always blazed viciously between them. The need flares up between them all over again, and neither of them bothers denying it. They've spent four years denying it, after all._

_Last night had been about desperation and forgiveness and pure heat. This morning, the blaze of need is tempered by the certainty of always having, made more intense by the assurance of finally _knowing_. Knowing that the love between them is real and enduring and beautiful in its emergence. _

_She stirs again an hour later, and her whole body aches. Not all of it is the good kind—her sore muscles remember the futile battle against Cole Maddox and the terrifying minutes she spent suspended by her fingertips—but she knows that she's never had a better morning because today, she'd woken up next to him. _

_Her heart swells almost to the point of bursting when she thinks about the fact that she has a whole lifetime of mornings to wake up to him next to her, just like this. _

_..._

One of her eyes is swollen shut, and the unforgivingly sharp edges of the nylon zip-ties dig into the flesh around her wrists. A wash of nausea wells up in her throat, and it's all she can do to suppress the vomit from dragging up her stomach. She's probably concussed, and she feels like a giant, walking contusion.

She's had barely a day to recover from her fight with the sniper, and the extra beating she received from her current captors probably hasn't helped, to say the least.

She leans her head back against the metal pipe they've secured her to. Her feet have been left free and unfettered, not that it does her much good, but at least she can move them every now and then to restore circulation.

_Silver linings_, she reminds herself, even as she remembers that one time Castle had teased her about how she was "all about the clouds." She'd proceeded to take his fortune in gummy bears during their ensuing poker game.

A harsh sob catches in her throat.

She can't think about him right now. She can't think about the fact that it's _his_ blood coating her hands and crusting in the crevices of her palms. She can't think about the possibility that he might be—

_No_, she cuts herself off harshly.

She has to stop thinking about that. She needs to focus on getting out of this instead.

She jerks her bound wrists against the pipe, wincing when the extra pressure further cuts off the circulation to her hands. Though the pipe rattles in response, the rusted metal won't likely break from its fastening anytime soon.

Glancing around the dim room, her one good eye takes stock of the wooden crates stacked along one of the walls. The room is small, maybe ten by ten feet, and not one of the bare, cement walls boast a window. Opposite of where she's facing is a metal door and a single incandescent bulb hangs from the ceiling.

Her best guess is that they had stowed her away in some kind of storage room.

With a little maneuvering, she manages to get her feet under her. She pushes herself to a stand, grimacing when every muscle in her body protests. Her shoulders are especially vocal in their discontent, the combined ache of hanging from a roof and being stuck in an unnatural position with her arms twisted behind her eliciting sharp pangs that resonate to her very bones.

Standing doesn't really make a difference, but she feels less vulnerable, and right now, every mental advantage is a victory.

She doesn't get any further in her examination of her prison when the rasp of metal against metal resounds from the other side of the door before it opens with an ominous creak.

She braces herself, but the sight of her captor shocks and chills her all at once.

"Ah, Detective Beckett. You're awake. So good of you to rejoin us."

The voice is all smooth velvet wrapped around cold malice.

She knows this voice.

The first time she heard it, she'd been struck with reluctant respect for its elegant lilts and sophisticated tones. It was the voice of one accustomed to being in the position of authority, the voice of a master strategist. She'd quickly learned to resent that voice, just a little at first and perhaps even a bit unfairly, but unsuppressed jealousy had reared its head before she could even register the ugly emotion.

Then...

Then she'd learned to hate it because that voice belonged to a traitor. A traitor to the nation, a traitor to all sense of decency, a traitor to _him_. And for her, more than anything, that last part is unforgivable.

Her eyes harden. She's never wanted to physically punish someone as badly as she does now, but she takes a deep breath to control her anger. She won't let this traitor have power over her emotions.

"Sophia Turner. You're alive."

The former CIA agent smirks, those beautiful lips curving into something so sinister, Beckett doesn't know how she ever missed it.

"So I am."

"How?" Beckett grinds out, her hands in fists behind her back.

Sophia doesn't answer her immediately, opting instead to take a casual stroll around the room. She examines the crates with false interest, taking her time before stopping a couple of feet away from Beckett.

"You have better things to be concerned about, I should think, than how I survived a bullet to the chest. But then…I'm not the only one who has survived one of _those_. Am I, Detective?"

Beckett clenches her jaw tight as the cold wash of realization floods her.

"It seems that my new…acquaintance and I have a common enemy." Sophia tilts her head to the side in cool amusement while she studies the imprisoned detective. Then the corners of her lips flip up in a cruel sneer as she draws a gun from the holster at her side and points it at Beckett's head. "You."

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_A/N: I just have to say this. Are the writers awesome at picking names or what? I mean, really, Sophia Turner? Turner, as in "turncoat"? Yeah, I see what you did, AWM._


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: __A lot of you were surprised at Sophia's return (yay, I did my job well!), but I actually got the idea because I'd heard rumors about AWM possibly bringing her character back, should the stars align. This is my take on one way they could play it. Anyhow, thank you so very much for all the reviews! _

_Just a fair warning: remember that this fic is labeled "suspense." Meaning…I get to jerk you around. A lot. Have fun! (evil laugh, evil laugh)_

_**Random fun fact:** I just joined the craziness that is tumblr. I'm still figuring it out as I go, but if you're interested in seeing more of the strangeness that goes on inside of my head, come check it out! You can also tell me what I'm supposed to do. hehe... My username is scripting-life.  
_

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Chapter Two

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The beeping won't stop.

God, why won't it stop? He's so tired, so damn tired, and the beeping won't let him rest.

He tries to reach out a hand to find the source of the infernal noise, and panic suffuses him when he realizes that he's restrained. He jerks against his bindings once, but immediately stops when a sudden, excruciating pain inundates his nerves and stifles his breathing.

Oh, it hurts. Why the hell does it hurt so much?

It all rushes back to him in a flood of disjointed images.

Kate showing up at his doorstep looking like a soaked rat, yet still managing to be the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on. Kate apologizing, telling him she just wants him. Kate kissing him. Him kissing Kate. One beautiful night of love and relief and _finally_, followed by a sweet morning of _yes, this is really real_. An afternoon of lounging about the loft, and though things are awkward with his daughter, there's this wonderful, tentatively hopeful air about them.

But then…

But then later that day. Later is nothing but a blur.

Her apartment.

Packing a duffel bag so that she could stay a couple of days uninterrupted at the loft.

Ambushed.

Overpowered.

Gunshots.

Pain, white flashing behind his eyes pain.

Blood.

Screaming. _No, you can't take her! Damn it, you can't take her!_

Black.

"Kate!" he tries to rasp out, but his voice is hoarse and an oxygen mask covers his mouth and nose. He tries to reach out again, but his arms are strapped against his side.

God, it hurts. Everything hurts. His body, his heart.

Kate is his heart, and she's not here. They've taken her. Where have they taken her?

"Mr. Castle, you need to calm down. We'll find her. We'll find Beckett."

That voice is familiar. He knows that voice. It doesn't make sense though. This voice wouldn't be here right now. This voice wouldn't be trying to calm him. This voice has no authority over Beckett any longer.

But…there's no mistaking the cool confidence and sharp edge of authority that laces her tone. There's no mistaking the sense of _you will heed my orders, or pay the consequences_.

"Captain Gates?" he questions, but he doesn't know if he manages to say it aloud.

She doesn't respond to him, only continues to promise him. "We'll find her, Castle. We'll find Beckett and bring her home."

…

Castle regains consciousness with greater awareness this time—enough, at least, to know that the incessant beeping is the heart monitor registering each ragged pump of his heart.

It hurts to be awake, hurts to even breathe.

Whatever painkillers they've injected into him via IV drip obviously aren't strong enough, or maybe the pain is really just that overwhelming?

(Or maybe the problem is that his heart feels shattered, and it's not because of the bullet that had torn a path across his body.)

He wonders if this is the pain that she'd endured last May when a sniper nearly ended her life for good. If it is, he can understand why she wanted to forget it all. He wishes he could pretend it all didn't happen, that everything after their morning together had been just a bad dream, but he can't.

The last memory he has is her reaching out for him in wild desperation to press against the weeping bullet wound in his torso, then a man dressed in black forcefully pulling her back and elbowing her in the face when she struggled to escape.

The image of her agony when she cried out his name even as her assailant sent her sprawling to the floor will forever be burnt into his mind's eye.

They'd taken her, and he hadn't been able to do a damn thing to stop them.

Kate. _God_, Kate.

He needs to get out here. He needs to find her.

Captain Gates. She was there earlier wasn't she? When he'd been loaded onto the ambulance, she'd been there, right?

He needs to talk to Gates. She needs to know. Everything. Damn the promise to leave Montgomery's previous sins out this. She needs to know. She needs to know so that she can find Kate.

The door to his private hospital room swings open, and all he sees is a blur of motion before his daughter is standing right there next to his bedside. Her hands are fisted at her side, like she wants to, needs to know that he's really there, but she's afraid to touch him.

His face contorts as he tries to dredge up a smile for her (anything, anything for his beautiful, precious daughter who's seen too much and grown too old), but it's so hard when he knows—he _knows_—that Kate is still out there, and God he can't lose her just when he finally had her.

One day is not enough. Nothing but the rest of their (long, long) lives is enough.

"Alexis, come here," he manages to get out. His voice is hoarse with injury, and it feels like he's trying to talk around a thick wad of cotton jammed down his throat.

Alexis hesitates for just a moment, and then with a choked out "Dad!" her arms fly around his neck as she angles herself over his bed awkwardly while keeping in mind not to press to close.

Castle would be lying if he said that this doesn't hurt at all, but he doesn't care so much about pain when he crosses his arms around Alexis' back and pulls her closer. Everything hurts so much, so very much, but this—this with Alexis will always be a balm.

Father and daughter stay wrapped up like that for several minutes, and when the ache of lifting his arms and stretching the wounds in his torso grow too unbearable, Castle finally lets her go, his hands slipping from her back to drop limply onto the mattress.

It's then that he notices that Alexis hadn't come in alone. His mother is hovering right there, her wise, blue eyes welling with tears. He doesn't think he has it in him to muster up another hug, but he holds out his hand for her, and she takes it with alacrity. There's strength in Martha's grip, a reflection of an inner fortitude, but he knows that the tightness with which she holds him now is born of a volatile mixture of relief and desperation and fear.

"Good God, Richard," Martha expels on a breath quivering with agitation. For all her dramatics, Martha Rodgers is not a woman prone to relinquishing control over her emotions, but right now, not even her prodigious acting experience can mask the torrents of worry and apprehension that exudes from her. She raises a hand to his face, where he just now realizes feels a little numb, like he's been injected with local anesthetics. "What happened?"

"Kate," he says with renewed urgency, each word a struggle to get out. "They have Kate."

"Who? Who does?"

He shakes his head, and that hurts too, but he ignores it. Too much to explain and too much time already wasted. "Captain Gates. Need to speak…with Gates."

…

Victoria Gates doesn't have a problem with being known as the resident hard-ass.

She was teethed on police procedure as a child, having been raised in a family of cops, and she knows better than anyone that unless one follows the rules precisely, scumbags go free. Due process is both the beauty and the noose of their judicial system. It was created to protect innocents from wrong conviction, but it also gives the wicked far too many loopholes to slip through if she fails to do her job as a cop incorrectly.

So no, she doesn't care that she's known as "Iron Gates." In fact, she's proud of the moniker. It means that she is known as a bastion for truth and for her hard-nose determination to play the game how it's meant to be played. That is how they get convictions. That is how criminals get put behind bars. And that is how she can honor the memory of her partner who'd been shot down by corruption in the ranks.

Perhaps that is why she developed a special interest in Detective Kate Beckett. Gates had heard rumors of this up and coming female officer who'd earned her detective badge a full six weeks before Gates herself had at Beckett's age. The young detective was known for her tenacity, her commitment to seeking justice for the lost. Beckett had an unnatural fascination for the weird ones, true, but none could fault her for having ever failed to dot every "_i" _and cross every "_t_."Criminals she booked and evidence she submitted rarely, if ever, were overturned due to a failure to adhere to protocol.

Beckett was a shining example of what every cop should strive to be.

Gates kept tabs on the young detective through the years, and even though the captain was a little disappointed that Beckett never tried to climb higher in the ranks, Gates could understand why she doesn't. Some cops live for the streets, and Beckett is one of them. Beckett has no use for a desk job when she could better employ her considerable talents in the daily grind.

Still, for all her merits, Beckett has one major weakness. Well, ever since the writer tag-along latched onto her and never let go, it would be more accurate to say that she has two. But that's beside the point.

It all starts with the one: her mother's murder.

Gates wouldn't say that Beckett's obsession is healthy, but Gates will admit to being impressed by Beckett's single-minded determination. The younger woman had completely changed the course of her life, and Gates is selfish enough to relish Beckett's addition on the police force, no matter the circumstances that put her there.

So when Gates received a call from a certain someone in the Congressional Office regarding Detective Beckett and her mother's murder, the captain jumped at the chance to take over as head of the 12th Precinct.

Gates' unlisted task had been simple. Guide the detective, protect her, but never let her know that greater forces are at work. Her mother's murder will be solved, but not by Beckett. Not if she continues to stick her neck out, just begging for someone to swing the sword and sever it.

They will get her justice, but they will do it in their time and follow the procedures that they set out.

Having been a detective for IA, Gates is not uncomfortable with secrets and conducting investigations behind the backs of her fellow officers. She agreed.

Gates just never expected everything to unravel so quickly and so harshly.

She'd received the call that afternoon.

_Smith is dead_.

And everything had fallen apart after that.

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_A/N: The following author's note is completely extraneous and has no merit whatsoever other than as an insight into the way my writing mind works. Read or disregard as you will._

_When I first encountered Gates, I thought it'd be great if the Castle writers went one of two directions with her: one, she's there on behest of some greater power to keep Beckett safe, or two, she's there to hinder Beckett on the Dragon's orders. I initially swayed towards the latter just because there was something about Gates that made me think that the captain was keeping secrets. (Which, I'm still convinced she is.) However, after 4x12 and how Gates handled the events therein, I began to shift my opinion towards the first direction. The fact that the situation would be too similar to what happened with Montgomery if she ended up being a mole also factored into my change of mind._

_That's when I began flesh out the idea of Gates having an ulterior (benign) motive for specially taking over the captain's chair at the 12__th__. I'd originally written the Gates portion in this chapter as a one-shot character-piece for her, but I didn't know how to fill in the all the story gaps, so I put it on the back burner until I came up with the idea for this fic. The sketch for her fit perfectly here, and that's really the birth of this particular plot twist._

_In any case, I think this will be a spin on the whole Dragon arc that hasn't been done yet, so I hope you all enjoy my take on things! Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave a review! _


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thanks so much for the awesome support and interest this story has gotten! Once again, I've been messing with image editing, so if you want to see the cover art I made for this story, you can find it here on my Tumblr account, scripting-life._

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Chapter Three

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Sophia Turner cocks the hammer of the gun, and Kate braces herself for the bullet that will take her life.

At least…at least if the gun is aimed for her head, it should be a quick death. Nothing like the pain of a bullet to the chest.

She laughs hysterically in her head. Turner would know all about that, wouldn't she?

This whole situation is insane. Just stupid, crazy, unbelievably insane.

How could Sophia be alive? How is it that she came upon the Dragon? What's their objective?

Kate has so many questions, so many tormenting questions, but then she realizes that the ones she really wants answers to have nothing to do with Sophia Turner or the Dragon or even her current captive state.

Instead, she keeps wondering why it is that the universe just refuses to let her be. How could it be so unfair to give her only one day—not even a full twenty-four hours at that—to soak up the immeasurable happiness and satisfaction of finally being with the man she loved? One night, one morning, and half of an afternoon. It isn't enough, not by a long shot, but that's all the time she was given.

A single day before everything got shot to hell.

(Even at death's door, she hears Castle's voice in her head jump on the unintended pun, and she's glad, so very glad, that he is with her even in this small, small way.)

In an ideal world, she would be with Castle right now. Maybe they'd be having a family dinner, and even if things are still awkward with Martha and Alexis, there would still be some sort of forward motion. Maybe they'd watch a movie after dinner. Maybe they'd go out for ice cream.

Maybe she'd be in his arms as he shows her once again just how deep his affection runs for her. Maybe she'd take control and _she_ would show him how absolutely crazy in love with him she is.

Or maybe they'd lounge together in his bed or on the living room couch, simply holding each other as they talk about everything and nothing.

But this isn't an ideal world, and she knows that—she's known it for years and years since an assassin's blade dug itself into her mother's kidney and stole her life.

No, this is the world that refuses to give her a break.

She hates it. She hates that she'd finally, _finally _seen that her life is worth more than death and blood and vengeance, but the past has snarled her so fully in its grasp that she can no longer escape it—even though she wants to leave it behind more than anything, she can't.

There is no _leaving it behind_ because even though she can let it go, they won't let _her_ go.

But as much as there has been so much in her life that _should have_ happened and didn't—some due to the fault of external forces beyond her control—the most difficult to swallow are the things that didn't happen because of her own design.

Four years. She could have saved them four years of heartbreak and crossed signals. Four years of pushing him away when all she'd really wanted was him.

As much as she'd convinced herself that there's no way their relationship would have survived if they'd gotten together earlier—that neither of them had grown enough as individuals to make it work—the truth is they could've been working through their issues _together_ rather than separately. Instead, all they had was a single day.

One day.

For second time in as many days, she's facing death without him, and all she can think is why had it taken her so long to see her mother's case as the death trap that it is.

This...this might be worse because she's had a taste of how beautiful, how amazing it would be between them, only to have it snatched away before she could really settle in and savor it.

Her chest constricts, and tears well up uncontrollably behind her eyelids.

God, _Castle_.

She misses him, needs his presence to steady and anchor her, even as she's torn between being thankful that he's not facing this execution with her and terrified over the wounds that had left him bleeding far too much of that precious essence of life.

No matter whatever may happen to her, the most important thing in her life is that Castle _live_.

If…if her death means that he'll no longer be entangled in this mess of her life, then maybe…maybe it'll be worth it.

She just wishes so badly that she'd taken the opportunity to tell him in actual words how much she loves him, how much he's become her lodestone, the home she would always find her way back to, her true partner is every sense of the word. She hopes that he knows that regardless of whatever mistakes she's made in her life, choosing him will never be one of them.

She doesn't really believe in a God—a higher power orchestrating the events of the universe—but if there is one, she prays that her death will not destroy him.

Kate tightens her jaw and clenches her fists so tight that her blunt fingernails break skin, but she doesn't care about the pain. She only cares that she won't cry in front of Sophia, won't break down in her last moments. She will not let _this woman _have that victory.

Kate's muscles tense when she sees Sophia's index finger tighten ever so slightly on the trigger, but just when Kate thinks _this is it_, the dark maw of the gun's barrel drop from her sight. Sophia pulls the gun away from her head with a dramatic sweep of her arm and fits it back into its holster.

Kate expels the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her head reeling with a dizzying mix of relief and confusion.

Her relief is short-lived as Sophia sighs theatrically. "Luckily for you, my acquaintance doesn't want you dead yet."

Her dark, molten eyes dance with macabre glee. "Then again, maybe you're not so lucky."

…

Castle stares hard and long at the woman he took great joy in irritating, but had always respected for her dedication to the job and to upholding the values of justice.

Gates _knew_? All this time, she's known about Montgomery and his deal with the devil. She's known about Raglan and McAlister, about Joe Pulgatti and Bob Armen, about Coonan and Lockwood. She's even known about Maddox and Smith.

She's known _everything_.

But if she's known…

He can't breathe, the wound that tore up the side of his abdomen screaming in concerted agony.

Castle had refused any additional painkillers until he could speak to Gates, and he wonders if they'd given him some morphine anyway. Maybe this whole thing is some weird dream he's conjuring up in his head.

But no, it's all really happening. This conversation where he'd thought he'd have to beg and plead with Gates to believe that there is a Dragon out there who wants Kate dead. This revelation that threw everything he'd believed completely out of orbit.

"What do you mean you already know?" he chokes out.

Captain no-nonsense Gates, always sure of herself in every move she makes, meets his eyes, and he sees the hint of an apology lurking behind the steel of her gaze. When she speaks, however, it is with her usual aplomb, her authority and self-assurance that she'd done what was needed clearly evident. She might sympathize with him in regards to Beckett's kidnapping, but she is first and foremost captain. She will not be undermined.

"I mean that the man behind Johanna Beckett's murder is not as invisible as you thought he is. There are people in higher places of authority than you and I who have been investigating him and his network of associates."

Castle shakes his head. All this time? All this time they've been running around trying to track down and take down the Dragon, and there have been people with a higher pay grade doing the exact damn thing?

"Why? Why did you not tell us? Tell Beckett? This is her mother we're talking about! Her _life_!"

Whatever glimmer of compassion Gates might have shown him wipes away in an instant, her words a whipcord of harsh reality cutting deep. "Because, Mr. Castle, this is bigger than just one murder. This is bigger than contract killers and hired snipers. And I'm sorry to say this, but this is bigger than Kate Beckett. Your problem, Castle, is that you think like a writer. You think like the heroes in your books, that if you just put enough effort and heart into solving a case—even a case as big as this one—good will prevail and evil vanquished. But that's not how real life works. You don't take down someone as big as this through sheer willpower. There are no points for effort. This has to be done in the right way. And the method with which you and Beckett were going about it was _not _the right way."

Her eyes soften at the edges. "It's hard to let other people take control of the justice you think she deserves, but you have to understand that your bumbling investigation only makes it that much more difficult to track this mastermind's footsteps without tipping him off."

He swallows—both the lump in his throat and his pride. It's true that he'd written himself into the hero's role, the one who would bring down the Dragon on Kate's behalf. But it wasn't done out of some half-assed whim, nor was it done out of some misguided hero complex. He just wanted this huge block in Kate's life to finally be resolved.

But the truth is that he'd been completely out of his league from the start. Hell, he'd seen it for himself; that's why he'd tried to convince Kate to let it go. Only death awaited those who dug too deeply into this case.

And yet…

"If you'd known from the start," he begins slowly, his voice hoarse from both raw emotions and the weakness of his body, "why didn't you at least tell Kate that you weren't completely ignoring her shooting? Why didn't you tell her that someone _was _still investigating and that she will get her mother's murderer if only she has the patience to wait?"

Gates shakes her head. "You know how Beckett is. If she'd known about this, she would have only gotten more obsessed with it, especially with the way she was when she first returned. Don't think I missed how out of control she was initially. I could not afford to have her investigating this on her own, but if I'd told her that, you know as well as I do that she would have disregarded everything and gone after it anyway. We could only protect her if she stayed away from the case."

Castle sighs deeply. It's the same refrain over and over again. Keep her away, protect her life. Yet, no matter that they managed to make her stand down, it was pointless in the end because the case _always _finds her. "We caught the murder case with Montgomery's house being burglarized. She got caught up in it all over again, and none of us told you about the connections."

Gates nods once, curtly but with no triumph of being in the right, although she deserves it after being so wronged by her own team.

It's tempting to let despair take over, to drown in thoughts of _if only they'd stayed away from the case and let the right people do their jobs_. But it's useless to think of _if only_s now.

Kate is missing, her fate unknown, and he can't let anything happen to her. Not when they've razed the barriers between them, when they've sampled the notion of _them_ and found it almost unbearably beautiful.

He takes a deep breath and focuses his thoughts on the here and now. Find her first. Then they can deal with all the other ramifications of Gates' revelations later. Together.

"What do we do now? How do we find her?"

The ice around Gates melts just enough for him to spy the faintest glimmer of respect stirring in the slight curve of her mouth. There's something else there too, something he's only ever noticed in brief glimpses in the captain. It's a feral thirst that he spots in Beckett when she's on the trail of a hot lead, and he realizes that Gates has that very same predator lurking behind her civilized mask.

"Isn't it obvious, Mr. Castle? We beard the lion in his den."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

* * *

"_Why aren't things awkward?" Castle asks her out of the blue._

_They're seated on the raised stools next to each other at his kitchen island, a plate of pancakes and a mug of coffee in front of both of them. _

_Kate arches an eyebrow at him. "What?"_

"_Why aren't things awkward?" he repeats. "Not that I want them to be, but I always thought things would be awkward the first time we…well, you know."_

_She presses her lips together in a now-familiar gesture of mirth. It never fails to amuse her that suave Richard Castle could sometimes be so flustered by her. Then again, she has to admit that seeing his unsettled reactions is one of the reasons she loves teasing him. _

_She leans closer, her hand coming to rest high on his thigh and she caresses the tensed muscle lightly. She holds the stare of his wide, blue eyes, then deliberately flicks her gaze down his lips before allowing it to crawl slowly back up again. "First time we what, Castle?"_

"_Uh…" he lets out, a sound more closely resembling a grunt than anything._

_He stares at her unblinkingly, and she thrills in his total absorption of her. She's always had a tiny flicker of fear in the back of her mind that once he'd had her, the lure of the chase would dissipate. She knows that it's unfair to him to think such a thing and that it degrades the depth of his love for her, but it's been there nonetheless._

_Even still, the majority of her knows that he would never abandon her just because he got tired of her._

_But this—this knowledge that she had him totally under her thrall—it soothes the tiny doubts that linger like a parasite. So she plays up the role of the seductress, even knowing that she doesn't need any tricks to keep his attention fixed solely on her. _

_She leans even closer to him, using the hand on his thigh to balance her weight, and she lets the heat of her breath wash over the shell of his ear. "The first time we slept together?" _

_She trails soft, barely-there kisses down the tendon of his neck. "The first time we had sex?" _

_She lingers at the fluttering pulse of his carotid artery, darting out her tongue to taste the skin there. "The first time we made love?"_

_She startles when his arms suddenly fly out to snap around her waist, pulling her off her stool and onto his lap. His mouth is hot and dominant over hers and his complete abandon makes her burn. "I don't remember the question," he confesses, lips and tongue and teeth devouring her._

"_Who cares?" she sighs breathily, fingers tangling in his hair as she arches her spine to bring their bodies closer together and _oh, _that feels good._

_The last thought she can clearly remember having before thinking becomes completely superfluous is _Thank God no one else is home.

…

Kate comes back to consciousness with a sudden blink of her eyes. Her head flies up, gaze darting all over the small room only to find that nothing has changed since her exhausted body drifted off into fitful sleep.

She wonders how much time has passed since Sophia left her with those cryptic words.

_Maybe you're not so lucky._

She snorts. As if Kate really needs Sophia to tell her that her luck is utter crap. She figured that one out all by herself, thank you very much.

Her hands have gone numb, and the phrase "hands falling off"is starting to sound a little too close to the realm of actual possibility for her comfort. Her stomach grumbles in protest of the aching emptiness, and she guestimates that her last meal—an awkward lunch with Castle and Alexis at the loft—happened maybe thirty hours ago. That means that she's been held captive for a full day now.

Well, if Sophia and her _acquaintance _are planning on a slow death, dehydration will do the job in about two more days. Even now, just the thought of water has her licking her cracked and bloodied lips.

Kate has never given up a fight in her life, but as she stares sightlessly at the metal door separating her from everything she loves, she realizes with a sinking pit in her stomach that she truly has no other options but to wait. Wait for either Sophia to return and carry out her sordid plans, or for a slow and painful death.

Kate doesn't even know which one she dreads more.

…

Castle tenses as he stares at the ornate lobby that leads to Senator Andrew Holden's office. His hands clench into tight fists, and it's all he can do to keep his breathing even—partly from the wild flurry of emotions dancing in his chest and partly from the sharp pangs of pain that slip through the strength of his painkillers.

He shouldn't be out of the hospital, much less walking around New York on a hunt for the Dragon, but he'd refused to sit back and do nothing while Kate's fate is still unknown. There was nothing Gates could do to prevent him from discharging himself against the doctor's orders, and Gates knows by now that it would be more productive if Castle does things her way and under her supervision than to mess things up bumbling about on his own.

So it is that less than a day after being shot, Castle finds himself standing outside the double doors leading to one of the nation's most influential men.

"Is this him? The Dragon? Is this him?" he rasps out, emotion roughening his voice.

Gates watches him with that inscrutable expression she's so good at keeping. Then she says, "No, he's not."

"What?" His fists release, and he swings his shocked gaze to her. "I thought you said we're bearding the lion in his den."

"Mr. Castle, there is such a thing as formulating a plan of action before rushing in where angels fear to tread."

He hears the subtle dig at how he and Kate always tend to get into dangerous situations without backup. It almost makes him want to smile. The Gates of the past few hours has been uncharacteristically compassionate, but rather than feeling satisfied that he's finally broken through the ice wall of the captain, her atypical sympathy only serves to make him see all too clearly how precarious a situation Kate is in.

Gates continues, "Senator Holden has been secretly investigating your so-called Dragon for the past decade. But in all that time, he still hasn't been able to gather the necessary evidence to openly convict him of his multitude of crimes."

"Ten years? Ten years and he still can't catch the Dragon? Who is he that he holds so much power that even a US Senator can't take him down?"

"That's a question best left to Senator Holden to answer."

Holden's secretary, a classy, middle-aged woman names Anne Terrence, comes up to them. "Captain Gates, Mr. Castle, Senator Holden will see you now."

Gates nods at her and comes to a stand next Castle. "Thank you, Ms. Terrence."

Anne goes up to the doors and swings the right side wide open for them.

Castle swallows, nervousness suddenly drying his mouth. After four years, he's finally going to find out who the Dragon is. He can finally solve the mystery of Kate's mother's murder and give Kate the closure she's been seeking so desperately for so many years.

And yet…

He realizes that none of this matters—no answers, no name, not even justice. Not a single thing will matter if he doesn't find Kate alive and well.

* * *

_A/N: Short explanation for why I did what I did. _

_Everyone assumes that the call Smith places to the Congressional Office was to the Dragon in order to make his deal. Therefore, the Dragon is either a US Senator or a member of the House of Representatives. This is the natural assumption, and a reasonable one. However, I always thought it'd be an interesting twist if the call was placed in order to contact someone who was_ already _investigating the Dragon, but for something much bigger than just Johanna Beckett's murder. This person would be the one to install Gates as Captain at the 12th in order to keep Beckett under control so that she doesn't interfere with and mess up their investigation._

_As for who the Dragon truly is, you'll just have to read on. ;)_

_Thanks so much for the amazing reviews and for so many of you adding this story to their favorites and alerts! _


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

* * *

Senator Andrew Holden, despite looking older than his fifty-seven years, has a stately air about him that immediately commands attention and respect. His hair was probably dark at one time, but now it's a regal silver that tells of his years of experience. The deep lines in his face proclaim the battles he's faced and the wars he's won, and the severe glint to his harsh blue eyes proves he's seen the worst of humanity.

And yet, incongruously, there's a crayon-drawn picture—the artist is obviously a child, maybe no more than five years old—hanging proudly framed on a prominent position on his wall of achievements. Acknowledged and praised by presidents and world leaders he may be, but no award could rival his pride in his grandchild.

That there is a man Castle could respect.

"Captain Gates, Mr. Castle," greets the senator from behind the monstrosity of his redwood desk. He gestures to the chairs across from him. "Please. Have a seat."

Castle is too jittery to want to sit, but he does so anyway.

"Senator Holden," begins Gates, "I think you know why we're here today."

The senator nods, a weary sigh making its way out of his mouth. "Smith is dead and Detective Beckett has gone missing."

"She hasn't gone _missing_," Castle corrects heatedly, even though he knows that he's quibbling over details. But the word _missing _just doesn't capture the urgency of the moment, can't possibly convey the anguish of seeing her beaten down and his inability to do a single thing to stop it. "They were waiting for us in her apartment, armed and ready, to forcibly _kidnap_ her."

Holden acknowledges him with a nod, and his calm acceptance of the facts makes Castle's blood boil. Ten years. This guy has been after the Dragon for ten years. Why couldn't he take him down earlier? If he had, Kate's life wouldn't be hanging in the balance right now.

Castle dispenses with niceties. He doesn't have it in him to play the polite game. "Who is he? Who is behind all of this?"

Holden cocks his head just slightly to the side, glancing at Gates who gives him a small nod in response. "This so-called Dragon that you're chasing, his name is Joseph Kurtz."

Castle's brow furrows. He knows that name. Why the hell does he know that name?

He looks up again to find Holden resolutely holding his gaze, refusing to let Castle look away, almost as if he were saying, _You wanted to know, and now you'll live with this nightmare in your head._

"Joseph Kurtz also happens to be the Secretary of the Army of the United States of America."

Oh God. Oh shit.

Castle is going to throw up.

All this time…All this time they've been chasing one of their nation's military leaders. It makes a sick kind of sense, with so many of the contract killers they've come across having been former military men themselves. Coonan, Lockwood, Maddox. They were all Special Forces.

But _God_, the Secretary of the Army? This is one of the men in charge of the nation's defense, a patriot of patriots. How he could be involved in the deaths of so many American citizens? Even worse, how were they supposed to fight against a man like this?

Castle understands now why it's taken a decade of careful investigation, and how there still isn't enough admissible evidence to convict. They are so in over their heads.

A politician is one thing. Civil distrust is fostered into the higher education system, so people are never surprised—only disgusted—when there's a crooked politician.

But a military man? That's a completely different story. He's not so idealistic to think that the American military and its many branches are pure as snow, but it's terrifying to think that one of the men charged with protecting their borders and their citizens from threats against their person could be so horrifyingly corrupt. To think that Kurtz had ascended to a position responsible for all matters regarding the United States Army by shedding innocent blood and using dirty money…

It's incomprehensible.

But…just how in the hell did Johanna Beckett's murder factor into the equation? And the botched up kidnapping attempt and the subsequent murder cover-up by three crooked cops. How did these all play into the creation of Kurtz as he is today?

How?

No. Castle shakes his head.

Those questions aren't important. How Kurtz became the Dragon doesn't matter to Castle right now. The only _how_ that matters is how he's going to get Kate back. Even if he has to go against the entire weight of the United States Army, Castle _has _to get Kate back.

He swallows thickly. "So what do we do now? How do we find Kate? How do we get her back?"

Holden's stare intensifies on him. Images spring up at the back of Castle's mind of a seasoned warrior of old, and it takes nearly everything he has to not flinch.

"Are you willing to make a deal for her life?" Holden eventually questions.

"Yes!" Castle exclaims. "_Anything_, as long as we get her back safe."

"Even if it means that the man who ordered her mother's murder goes free?"

Castle's blood freezes, the world coming to a slow, sick stop. "What?"

Holden stands and turns to walk to the large bay window behind his desk. "That's the deal you had with Smith, wasn't it? Her safety for dropping the investigation?"

"That—"

"Smith was an associate of mine. We worked together at one time to bring down Kurtz, but we eventually found that our strategies and methods deviated. He was determined to use his network of shadows to bring him down, and I insisted on keeping the investigation aboveground and by the law. On occasion, our methods converged, and we used each other. Your deal with Smith was one of those times. I permitted that deal because it conformed to my plans. It was a convenient way of keeping Detective Beckett away from the case and out from under my feet. But understand this, Mr. Castle. I _will not_ be threatened into dropping this investigation, even at the cost of Detective Beckett's life. I will not let Kurtz go."

Castle's lungs constrict under the vice of despair. "That can't be the only option. Why does that have to be the only option?"

"Smith would never be so foolish as to keep incriminating evidence somewhere easily found, so it stands to reason that they were unable to locate the files and believe that either you or Detective Beckett are now in possession of them. Much as it pains me to say this, Mr. Castle, the only reason they would keep Detective Beckett alive—if indeed she still is," (_She is, she is, she is_, Castle chants in his head, desperate enough to pray that repetition will make it so), "—is that they want to use her as leverage in exchange for the damning evidence."

No. No, it's all wrong. It's all so goddamn wrong.

"I don't have anything. Damn it, neither of us has _anything_!" Castle stresses, even as anger wells up thick and blinding in his chest.

He's never been all that reverent to the dead—they are empty shells without souls who's only tether to the living are the stories they leave behind—but this very well might be the first time he has ever wanted to damn a dead man to hell.

Damn Smith. Damn him for putting them in this position. Damn him for dying. Damn him for dragging him and Beckett into his web of deceit and intrigue. Damn him, damn him, damn him!

"Whether you have anything or not is irrelevant; what matters is what they think, and they think that you do have it. Do you see, Mr. Castle? I cannot help you save her without compromising this investigation. And without this investigation, the Dragon goes on without facing punishment."

Castle shakes his head. He doesn't care about justice or building a case or convincing a grand jury that the nation's highest ranking Army officer is dirty. He only knows that Kate is in their hands, and God, he can't lose her. Not even for her mother.

"You can't. You can't just sacrifice her like this. You _can't_, damn you!"

Holden's voice remains neutral and that makes Castle hate him a little. How can he be so calm about this when Castle feels like his whole world is ending?

"She's your end-all; that's why you can give anything to see her safe. But this war is not about you, Mr. Castle. This is about bringing justice to dozens, maybe even hundreds, of victims who got in the way of one man's ambition. This is about scourging out the corruption in our government, of ensuring that the wicked face judgment."

Castle knows this. Intellectually, he _knows_ this, but he can't—he just _can't._ He can't objectify her life like that. He can't forget the bliss in her eyes when they'd come together as one, can't forget the terror in them when she saw him shot. He can't let her be just another casualty in this war that has already taken far too much from her.

"I don't care," he whispers, voice hoarse and the pain in his heart more piercing than the phantom bullet in his stomach. "I don't care about all that."

"Just think about this, Mr. Castle. What would your detective say if she found out that the price you paid for her life was the freedom of her mother's murderer?"

Oh God, she would hate him. He knows it. She would hate him so much. But he just can't.

Castle pitches his voice low. "Will you help me, or not?"

The moment stretches out, a thousand thoughts running riot through Castle's head, and not one of them coherent.

"I cannot. I'm sorry."

His vision splinters and the world implodes.

Holden has barely finished his sentence when Castle is up out of his seat and almost to the double doors.

"This was a waste of time. A goddamn waste of time," he bites out as he shoves his way out of the lobby and onto the crowded streets.

So many people are just milling about, heads down or eyes glued to their smartphones, and he hates it. He hates how they are just going about their daily lives when he feels like nothing is going to be right ever again.

…

"You think I'm wrong for not helping him pursue his detective," Holden states when he sees that Gates has lingered behind.

"I think that right and wrong in this situation are difficult to judge," she replies carefully. Then she adds, "I don't think you are wrong, but I don't think you're right either."

Holden cocks his head to the side. "I never would have expected you of all people to say that, Victoria. It is your own partner's death, after all, that has driven you in your own pursuit of the Dragon."

"Yes, and I will continue to do so to the best of my ability. But I wonder sometimes if we haven't been so caught up with getting justice for the dead that we've lost sight of the living. My partner is dead. Your wife is dead. When we catch him, they will remain dead. But Detective Beckett still lives. After everything is said and done, I'm a cop, Andrew. Yes, it is my job to find the evidence to arrest criminals. But it is also my job to protect the innocents. Beckett is an innocent, as is Castle."

He gives her a long look, but does not say anything in reply.

"Just think about it, Senator. As for me, I fully intend on getting my detective back, with or without your help. I will do my best to not compromise your own investigation, but I will not lose another one of my people to this."

* * *

_A/N: Joseph Kurtz is named for the piece of literary fiction that I still have nightmares about analyzing ("The horror! The horror!"); namely, _The Heart of Darkness. _Joseph is for Joseph Conrad, the author, and Kurtz is the name of the megalomaniac, self-established king of the Central Trading Station in the middle of the Congo River. Yeah…I hated that novella, but I remember writing almost every single one of my AP prompts on it back in the day. Which is probably why I hated it. ;) In any case, I thought Kurtz was an eminently appropriate character to base the Dragon off of._

_Also, it was kind of hard finding a high enough position while still being somewhat obscure to make the Dragon. If you're not American (and even if you are...) and you want to find out more about just who the Secretary of the Army is and what he does, you can look it up on Wikipedia. Which is, admittedly, what I did when I went looking for a Dragon..._

_Don't forget to leave a review please! Thanks._


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

* * *

Kate can almost feel the blood clotting in her hands.

She presses her palms together, hoping to feel the pinpricks of sensation that would signal the flow of blood to her extremities. She feels nothing but terrifying numbness.

It's not that she fears death itself, but this slow process of watching her body shut down cell by cell is one of her worst nightmares.

She'd told Castle once that she always thought, as a cop, her death would come in the form of a bullet. (She won't even go into the fact that she had indeed taken a bullet and for just a few moments, really had died).

But beneath the certainty that she would eventually die in the line of fire lies the fear of dying a slow death. She's absolutely terrified of watching her body rebel against her mind, of watching herself deteriorate until all she has left is a brain trapped within a shell. She hates the thought of being a prisoner in her own body, and she hates the poeticism that makes her a prisoner outside her body too.

Sophia hasn't come back for her yet, and no one else has entered the room either to drop off food or water.

The once fierce grumbling of her stomach has quieted, and she knows it isn't a good sign. Facts from the survival skills classes that she'd taken with her dad back when she was in high school and had gone on frequent backpacking trips come back to pelt her with the cold reality of her situation.

Mild dehydration manifests itself in dizziness, headaches...loss of appetite. When the dehydration worsens, symptoms include lethargy, fainting, and seizures. Severe dehydration would find a person with increased pulse and respiration rate, hallucinations, nausea.

She's still a mild case right now, but she knows that she only has a matter of maybe forty hours before she'll experience all of the above. And of course that hasn't even included the last effect: death.

Her mind suddenly flashes back to the case with Gage and how they'd been stuffed in the trunk of one of their victim's car. She'd been so full of indignant pride then, so determined to find the way out without relying on _his girlfriend _to rescue them.

So much has changed since then, not the least of which includes the fact that Kate now knows that Castle is unequivocally _hers._

What hasn't changed, however, is the fact that Kate _will not _let Sophia win.

If Kate refused to let his "girlfriend" rescue them from the car months ago, then Kate sure as hell isn't going to let his traitor take her away from him now.

…

It's not until Castle is halfway down the block away from Holden's office when the pain hits him like a freight train.

Bursts of white flash behind his corneas, and he stumbles back against the nearest wall. Passing pedestrians cast wary eyes at him, but he can't think past the assault of needles digging deep into the marrows of his bones and setting his nerve endings aflame. The slightest movement sends surges of debilitating pain through his body until he has to grit his teeth just to breathe.

His vision blurs, and it takes him a while to realize that it's because of the tears welling up behind his lids, the spasms of agony too much for his battered body to withstand without additional painkillers.

But he can't take painkillers, not anything more than aspirin, anyway. Anything more would knock him out, render him useless, and he knows better than anyone that these crucial first hours can't be wasted.

_Suck it up, Castle. Man up!_

His breaths come in hyperventilating pants by this point, so it takes intense effort to focus his gaze on a single spot on the smooth concrete floor. He forces himself to clear his thoughts of everything but that one spot, pushing out the panic and the crushing agony that radiates infectious warmth from his torso to his extremities.

Slow down. Everything needs to be slowed down.

He sucks in a deep breath, holds it in until his lungs protest, then pushes it out in a long, slow stream. He does it again and again until his respiratory rate evens out—as does his pulse—and the fog of pain clouding his head clears enough for him to see black slacks draped over a pair of practical heels appear in the spot he'd been staring sightlessly at.

"Mr. Castle. Do you need to return to the hospital?" Gates asks. One eyebrow is raised in skepticism—probably surprised that he's still sort of standing—but there's nothing malicious in her tone.

"No," he rasps. "No time…for the hospital. Aspirin…would be good."

Unexpectedly, Gates comes over to help support his weight by sliding under one of his arms and bracing him with a hand at his waist. "Let's go, then. There's some in the car."

He must be more out of it than he thought because he's pretty sure that Gates just offered to let him ride shotgun in her cruiser.

"Where are we going?" Then because the filter between his brain and his mouth is out of commission due to the pain, he adds derisively, "It's not like Mr. Senator was much help."

"I will let go of that just this once because I can understand the difficulties. But I will not tolerate a dig like that a second time, are we clear, Mr. Castle? Senator Holden has his reasons."

He clenches his jaw. "What about you, Captain? Do you agree...with the senator?"

He doesn't expect her to answer, but the captain is full of surprises today.

"The question we must each ask ourselves is whether it is more important to save a single life now, or to save the potential lives of many in the future. One for a hundred, or a hundred for one? If we were playing a game of chess, I would opt for the latter, no question. Indeed, sacrifice is the name of the game. But we are more than pawns in a game, and I find that if I reduce human lives to chess pieces, I'm no better than the Dragon we chase."

Gates abruptly stops talking as if she's revealed too much of herself.

Funny. He can see a lot of Beckett in Gates.

Changing the subject, the captain reverts to her unsentimental self as if her moment of introspection hadn't happened. "We're going back to Beckett's apartment. Our team and CSU have already swept it, but you know Beckett better than anyone. Maybe you'll spot something we missed."

They walk in silence punctuated only by faint grunts of pain he emits when he's occasionally jarred.

Gates helps Castle into the passenger seat of her car before Castle quietly says with complete sincerity, "Thank you."

She nods, closes the door and heads to the driver's side.

They both know that Castle means more than her helping him into the car.

…

Castle doesn't realize how devastating it would be to return to Kate's apartment until he's standing stock still just outside her doorway, yellow police tape blaring _DO NOT CROSS _in his face.

It's been barely twenty-four hours since the last time he was standing just right here, planting distracting kisses across her neck and shoulders as he crowded her front against the door.

Her hands had fumbled to get the key into the lock, and she'd laughed a breathless, "Let me get us inside, first!" which he'd ignored by tonguing a heated line across her clavicle. Despite her weak protest, she'd tilted her head to give him greater access. He'd taken it with a small grin of triumph, his satisfaction increasing when he pulled a soft moan from her lips.

"Castle," she'd whispered in that low, sexy voice that invariably makes his pulse kick faster.

Yet, even in the throes of his need for her, he'd recognized that what he loved most about that particular voice wasn't the sensual purr or the lust-laden tones. No, while those were pretty damn amazing, not even they could compare to the love and adoration for _him_ that she didn't even bother hiding, and that—that was so very beautiful.

Now though...

Now he hates himself for distracting her because the moment she'd finally managed to unlock the door, and they'd stumbled through still tangled up in each other, _they _had attacked.

He doesn't think he can ever forgive himself for being responsible for keeping her off her guard.

"Mr. Castle!" Gates calls out to him, and he's broken from the desolating memory.

The captain raises an eyebrow at him (God, everything reminds him of Kate), and he swallows heavily before ducking tentatively beneath the tape. The four aspirins he'd taken early don't do much more than dull the worst of the pain, but it's enough for him to move slowly without constantly wincing.

It hurts to see her apartment such a mess. This is supposed to be her safe haven, a refuge from the ugliness of her job. Now it's chaos.

The coffee table is overturned, the cushions on the couch sliced open, books spilled from the shelves, and even the large Alex Gross painting gracing one of the loft's walls has been shredded for secrets. He doesn't have to look to know that her window turned murder board has been stripped bare.

But those files are meaningless. There's barely anything more in them than what is in the official police records.

Condemning evidence? No, nothing of the sort. Nothing at all. Nothing that would either aid them or prove detrimental to the Dragon.

And yet they'd still torn up her apartment for these elusive files they can never to find because there is nothing _to_ find.

Anger crests like a tsunami wave, and red fills his vision.

Why can't they leave her alone? Why can't she just be given the chance to live a life void of conspiracies?

"Do you see anything out of the ordinary, Mr. Castle?"

He's about to respond with a snide "Aside from the fact that it looks like a pack of rabid dogs were let loose in her apartment?" when he spots it.

He ignores Gates' question and moves toward the kitchen island.

It's _Deadly Storm_, his debut Derrick Storm graphic novel, lying there undisturbed by the carnage of wrecked furniture all around it. The graphic novel is flipped open, pulled to the edge of the counter like someone had been reading it, but he knows that the kitchen is the last place Kate would be if she were reading.

No, this is the work of someone else. It was left there on purpose for him to find.

Castle swallows thickly, suppressing the wild hope that flares inside him and studies the page it's open to. It's the scene where Storm is supposed to meet up with CIA Agent Clara Strike in an abandoned warehouse down by the Hudson, but instead of seeing his handler, he's ambushed by the terrorists he'd been pursuing.

He releases the breath he doesn't even know he'd been holding.

So those are the facts of the game.

"I know where she is," he says, gesturing at the graphic novel.

Gates looks askance at it, but she gives him the benefit of the doubt. "Where?"

"Abandoned warehouse at the intersection of West 44th Street and 12th Avenue."

"I'll call in Ryan and Esposito and tell them to put a team together to meet us there."

He's surprised that Gates takes the initiative to include Esposito when he knows that the detective has been suspended, but he won't bring that into question now. Castle doesn't trust anyone else backing them on this other than those two.

Yet, there is something that he _does_ have to say. "It's a trap."

The predator returns, and Gates responds, "I know. And this is the moment when what I said about the lion and the den applies."

* * *

_A/N: Major thanks to everyone for your incredibly encouraging reviews. I know you're all impatient for Kate to get out, and as much as I love torturing my readers - er, that is, uh... ;) jkjk. She'll get out. I won't say soon, so let's go with...__not too far into the indeterminate future._

_Also, here's a big thank you to Deb838 for pointing out a potentially embarrassing oversight on my part about Castle's wound and the fact that he's coping really well for having just been shot. _

_As an extension of that, I did a little more research on gunshot wounds to the abdomen (which I probably should have done **first**...oops) and realized that it would be near impossible for Castle to be up and about a day after surgery if any of his major organs had been hit. And almost all gunshot wounds to the abdomen hit a major organ because, as many sites said, a body is all squishy in there. (You'd think that that would be one of those "duh" facts, but I guess not.) _

_Anyhow, because of that, I've made minor edits to the past chapters so that the wound is a mostly superficial one that glances the side of his torso rather than a bullet to his middle, but would still be debilitating and possibly fatal due to blood loss. Interestingly enough, this change works better with my plot anyway. Gotta love it when realism works to your advantage in fiction._

_Oh, and I haven't read _Deadly Storm _so I have no idea what it's about. I just borrowed the graphic novel for obvious reasons._

_**EDIT 6.19.12**:** I forgot to mention another error of mine. Despite all my research on finding an appropriate Dragon, it turns out I messed up some of my facts after all. Thank you ds1255 for pointing out that the Secretary of the Army is not, in fact, a military man, but rather a civilian appointed by the President. Apparently, I still managed to get my facts mixed up. :( Sorry about that error, but I have to ask you all to maintain your suspension of disbelief for this error because I'm not sure how I would rewrite it to fix this mistake. Thanks!**  
_


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

* * *

Castle is in Gates' cruiser, gumball flashing and sirens blaring, when his cellphone rings.

He looks at the caller ID and for the first time in his life, he seriously contemplates letting his baby girl's call go to voicemail. There's just…so much at stake right now, and he doesn't want to be distracted from finding any potential clues in the _Deadly Storm _graphic novel that's spread open on his lap.

He has to focus his attention on saving Beckett, on making sure he's not condemning his whole team to death by following this lead that had been so obviously laid out for _him_.

He knows what Alexis will say, knows that she's worried about him, but God, if he doesn't get to Beckett in time, what will it matter how injured his body is since his heart will never recover?

He picks up the call because he will always pick up when it's Alexis, and he wonders if he should hate himself a little for even _thinking _about ignoring her.

He shakes it off and makes sure that his voice is steady and calm before he answers. "Alexis? What is it, pumpkin?"

"Dad! Where are you? Are you okay?"

"Calm down, pumpkin. I'm fine. I'm with Captain Gates right now, so don't worry about me."

"Don't worry? Dad, you just got shot yesterday, and they had to give you a blood transfusion, you'd lost so much blood! You shouldn't even be out of the hospital right now!"

Oh. He hadn't known that. He tries to remember whether he'd seen a bandage around Alexis' arm or his mother's, but his memory is still fuzzy around the edges.

He shakes his head. Can't think about that right now. Can't think about how much terror he's put his family through. Can't.

"It looked bad, but it was really just a graze. I'm feeling perfectly fine. I could probably take you on a round of laser tag right now," he jokes with as much cheer as he can put behind it.

Alexis doesn't buy his forced humor, and his heart breaks even more when he hears her stifle a sob on the other end.

"Alexis…Sweetheart—"

"You're going to get yourself killed. I keep telling you, 'You're not a cop, Dad. You're not a cop,' but you just don't listen!" she accuses. He can sense her anger escalating and, God, he can't deal with this right now. "Does she really mean more to you than your life? Than me and Gram?"

"You know that's not how this works," he growls, frustrated that Alexis could even bring up comparisons right now, yet also knowing that the reason Alexis is so upset is because she's just so worried for him.

"Do I, Dad? All I know I that if you'd been found even five minutes later, you'd be dead. If the bullet had hit you two inches to the left, you'd be dead. Do you even know how miraculous it is that you're moving around right now?"

"Yes, I do know. I also know that since I'm physically capable of moving around, I have to spend my time finding Beckett."

"And it's back to Beckett again! Damn it, Dad, this isn't one of your books! How do you know she's not already—"

"Don't you dare, Alexis," he hisses, tone darker than he'd ever used with her before. "Don't you dare finish that sentence, or so help me…"

She backtracks immediately and even over the phone he can tell that she's mortified at the words that almost came out of her mouth. "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't mean—I'm sure she's—I just…"

He sighs wearily. "I know, pumpkin, I know. But Alexis, you've always been mature for your age, and right now, sweetheart, I need you to be mature."

"Why do I always have to be the mature one?" she asks, echoes of a stubborn childishness she doesn't often show lacing her voice. "Why do you always have to run off and get yourself into these stupidly dangerous situations?"

He doesn't want to do this, but they're nearing the warehouse and he needs to focus on what's most urgent. He steels himself to break his little girl. "Alexis, we'll talk about this later."

"No, let's talk about it no—"

He cuts her off ruthlessly. "No, we're talking about this later because, Alexis? This right here? This distracting me while we're chasing down a lead? This is what's going to get me killed."

A broken whimper comes across the line.

Oh God, he hates himself, hates himself so much for slapping his daughter with a charge that's so unfair to her. But it's also true. He can't be distracted like this. Not when so much is on the line.

His already fractured heart splinters even more when all he hears on the other side of the line are the unsteady expulsions of air of his daughter trying to do what he asked and to be unfairly mature. A couple more seconds pass and he can hear her swallow. "Okay. I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, pumpkin. You've done nothing wrong. But I really can't talk now, do you understand?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Come home safe please. You and Detective Beckett both."

"We'll be back before you know it. I love you Alexis."

"Love you too, Dad." Her voice breaks at the last word, but she ends the call before he can comfort her anymore.

He's a terrible father.

He looks over to see Gates studying him from the corner of her eyes. "You do what you have to do, Mr. Castle."

It doesn't make him feel any less of a failure.

…

By the time Castle and Gates pull up to the warehouse, Ryan and Esposito are already there with a team ready for action in full tactical gear.

Gates wastes no time in taking control. "Do we have the layout for the building?"

Esposito nods and spreads out the blueprint across the hood of Gates' cruiser. "Pretty standard warehouse layout. Six long aisles in increments of three running the depth of the warehouse. Smaller storage rooms run along the side walls, and stairs on either side lead to an upper level of offices."

"Good. Have you detected any movement?"

"Nothing."

"Esposito, you lead one team to fan out along the aisles. Ryan will lead another team up the stairs to clear the offices. I'll lead the third team in checking the rooms on the first floor. Remember, we are expecting an ambush of some sort. If they don't attack us with numbers, then keep your eyes peeled for explosives. Action in five."

"Yes, sir!" responds the team in unison.

Gates heads around to the trunk of her car to put on her gear, and Castle takes this time to approach her. "What about me?" he asks.

The captain doesn't look up as she straps on her bulletproof vest and double-checks her weapons. "Mr. Castle, you are not a trained officer of the law, and you are injured. If you go in as you are, you will only be a danger to my team, yourself, _and _Detective Beckett. For once in your life, let the real professionals do our jobs. Stay in the car and be ready with dispatch. Understood?"

He grits is teeth, hating the truth in the captain's words. With how he is right now, he's nothing but a liability.

"Yes, sir."

She nods, then, as she's moving to join her team, she throws a last reassurance over her shoulder. "We'll get her out."

…

Castle has never managed inactivity well. He has, what some may say, a chronically short attention span, but reality is just that his mind is constantly active. It jumps from one scenario to the next with the speed of a synapse connecting, his imagination able to build bridges between unrelated facts with enviable dexterity.

He finds it impossible to sit in Gates' car while everyone is inside—while _Kate _is inside—and he's been rendered useless once again. He's been useless to her too often recently, and the numerous possibilities of how wrong everything can go won't stop plaguing him.

Everything is wrapped up too nicely. He's missing something. He knows he is.

Jittery with adrenaline that he has no way of dispersing, he digs out _Deadly Storm _and once again scours it for clues. There has to be something here that will tell him why everything just feels so _wrong_.

Derrick enters the warehouse from a side door. He ducks past rows of trucks waiting to be loaded and heads for a room in the back. Just as he clears the last truck, however, instinct has him turning around just as a masked assailant swipes at him with a wicked-looking hunter's knife. Storm stumbles back enough to miss the brunt of the attack, but the tip of the blade still draws a thin line of blood across his chest.

The next page is where the real fight takes place with multiple masked men joining in the fray, but Castle focuses his attention on just this one leaf.

He's gotten the location of the warehouse and an ambush. The wound across his chest could mean Kate. (It's such a ridiculously poetic thing for him to be thinking right now, but nothing else has ever been so true.)

What else is there?

Side door. Trucks. Room in the back. Hunter's knife.

Wait.

Back up.

Trucks.

Shit. The loading bay. The ambush takes place in the loading bay. But Esposito's blueprint didn't mark out a specific loading bay for this particular warehouse.

His gut churns uncomfortably. Are they in the wrong place after all?

His right foot starts tapping out a nervous rhythm as he tries to decide what to do.

He'd only borrowed the location of the abandoned warehouse for the graphic novel, so the layout of this and its fictional counterpart are two completely separate things. Maybe the reason a loading bay isn't marked out in the floor plan is because it's external to the building. Or maybe it was added as an addendum to the warehouse after the plan was drawn up.

Either way, it's not where the team is.

Which means that the team is not where Kate is.

He needs to be where Kate is.

The car door swings open a little too quickly, and his movements are limited by the sharp twinges of pain that remind him that his wound, though sewn up and bandaged tightly, is still severe enough to kill him if he rips the stitches and starts bleeding out again.

He straightens with a wince once he's out of the car and studies the building. From this angle, it doesn't look like there are any add-ons. Esposito said they'd checked for movement, but he didn't say anything about what might be located out back.

Okay, so that's where Castle will check first. He tries to jog, but the jerky up and down movement jars his wound and sends bursts of pain erupting behind his eyelids.

Walking then.

God, he's so useless.

The space between car and building seems interminable and his impatience stretches the five minutes into fifty. But in the end, it doesn't matter because he's found what he's looking for.

He's found his side door.

…

Her throat hurts.

The rest of her body aches like she's been beaten (oh wait, she has been—great; gallows' humor with herself), but her throat bothers her the most. She can taste the thin layer of film produced by a dry mouth, and it hurts to swallow.

Earlier, she'd tried yanking at the metal pole her wrists are secured to—disregarding the damage she was doing to her nerves and tendons because she can't actually feel the pain anymore—but for all that the metal rattled, nothing loosened. She'd stood then, tried to kick at a crack in the wall to loosen a jagged piece of concrete to maybe saw through her bindings, but the only thing she managed to loosen was her knee joints.

Despite her resolve to not let Sophia win, Kate doesn't know how she can realistically get out of this without divine intervention.

She rests her head against the pole and knocks against it a few times for good measure.

_Come on, think!_

There has to be something she hasn't thought of yet. There has to be—

Her eyes jerk to the door when she hears movement on the other side.

So they're coming for her, after all.

Is it to give her enough food and water to last a few more days, or is it to finish her off altogether?

Trickles of sweat roll down her temples as she listens to the jangling and grating of metal, tension coiled up inside of her like a thick spring. She debates whether it's worth it to try and stand, but she decides that the effort is just too much. It's better to save her energy for when she'll really need it.

She waits and she waits, but still the commotion on the other side has yet to materialize into the door opening.

She laughs a little hysterically to herself. Maybe they forgot the key.

Just when she thinks she can't take any more of this suspense, a loud clatter like something falling to the ground is quickly followed by a muffled grunt of pain.

Then the door is swinging open, open, and—

Oh, God, this can't be real.

"_Castle."_

* * *

_A/N: Sometimes as a writer, you just have to get in touch with your inner evil!you._

_Thanks for everyone's amazing support! Methinks we're nearing the end now, so hang on for the rest of the ride!_


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: I suck. Like seriously. I suck. I'm sooooo terribly sorry for leaving you all with such a cliffhanger and then taking so long to get this chapter out. It was so frustrating because I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, but it wouldn't get written._

_Anyhow, it looks like maybe one more chapter and then an epilogue to tie up loose ends after that. Thank you so much for the incredible support you've given me throughout this story. You all have been simply amazing and for everyone I haven't thanked individually, I want to take this time to really express my gratitude for all the reviews, favorites, and story alerts that I've gotten for this story. Thank you!_

* * *

Chapter Eight

* * *

Kate's here. She's really, really here.

For all his wildest hopes, a large part of him hadn't actually expected to find her here.

When Castle had entered the nondescript door located at the back of the warehouse, he'd expected to it to lead to nothing but a back stairwell for emergency exits. While it had been a back exit, there'd also been another door nestled behind the staircase. _That_ one had brought him to a separate stairwell which had led down, down, down into a basement of sorts.

He doesn't know why this part of the building went unacknowledged in the floor plans, but maybe that was part of the reason that _they_, whoever they were, had chosen this particular site.

Then he'd seen the heavy metal door standing ominously at the end of the hall, he'd known that was it. After that, it had been a matter of exercising his dubious skills of picking the heavy lock, which made him remind himself to look up Norman Jessup for more lock-picking lessons. His fingers shook from both adrenaline and pain, his vision blurred by the dim lighting and the sweat rolling down his face. But he persevered, and was rewarded when the lock popped open, the heavy chains slipping down with a loud rattle onto the concrete floor and nearly slapping his shins in their descent.

Then door had swung open, and _oh_! the sight of her is glorious.

Shock paralyzes Castle for a moment, and then he's _runningshufflingstumbling_ to his knees before her, the pain of tearing open his stitches overwhelmed by the joy (the joy, oh the joy!) and relief of seeing her actually here with his own eyes.

Her name is a litany on his lips, interrupted only by chants of _I love you I love you I love you_ as his lips flutter from her cheeks to her nose to her forehead, and he's so thankful, so thankful that she's warm and breathing and alive beneath his mouth.

He pulls back, brushes her tangled hair out of her face, his name a broken whisper tripping off of her cracked lips.

God, oh God, there're so many bruises. All over. Her left eye looks painfully swollen and damn it, they'd hit her without mercy, and he's so angry but he's so relieved because _oh_ she's alive.

She tries to catch his attention with his name, but he can't focus on anything outside of her and oh God, she's so beautiful. Even battered and bruised, she's so beautiful that it makes his heart ache. He spends several more moments lost in the heady knowledge that she's here and he's here and they're finally together again before his sluggish brain catches up to remind him that time is of the essence.

"Gotta get you out of here."

"Castle, you're bleeding." Her voice, rough from dehydration has never sounded more wondrous to his ears.

"Is that….zip-tie? They restrained you using zip-ties?"

"Castle, why are you bleeding?"

"Knife, I need a knife."

"What happened? How did you find me?"

"I brought a knife with me didn't I? Yes, I did, I did."

"Castle—"

"Just hang on. I'll get you out of here."

His fingers fumble with his pocket knife and he almost drops it on himself as he flips it open. He swallows the pangs that shoot through his body when he moves behind her to slice at the zip-ties. His vision is hazy and he has to take a moment to collect himself so that he doesn't accidentally cut into Kate's swollen and bruised wrists.

"Castle—"

"God, I love you, Kate. So very much—"

"Castle, it's Sophia."

"I love you. I've missed you so much, Kate. So much. I—"

"Rick, Rick, Rick. Ever the romantic."

Castle cuts off immediately, the foreign voice jarring yet unsettlingly familiar. His head swings up, and it must be the blood loss making his vision hazy because he could swear that the woman standing in the doorway is Sophia Turner. It can't be. She's dead.

"You came even knowing this was a trap." The woman takes a step closer, gun held loosely against her thigh as if this were a game—that same swagger and ease that had once captivated him for the character of Clara Strike. God, it really is her, right down to the arrogant smirk she bestows on them, as if it is stupidity for them to love. "You were right. She really is different."

"Sophia. You're alive," he says dumbly.

"Rick," the former CIA agent greets with that lightly amused laughter in her voice that he'd once upon a time found so entrancing. When he'd shadowed her, he'd thought that her amusement was good humor. He recognizes it now for the cold condescension that it is. "I thought _Deadly Storm _would have been enough to tip you off. You seem a bit off your game. Took you longer than I'd expected."

His eyes widen at the implication. "Clara Strike. You were telling me it was you from the beginning. And then you led me here. Why leave me for dead if you're going to go through all this trouble?"

"Oh, you poor, deluded bastard," Sophia says on a sigh, tone frighteningly amiable. "You really think you'd be here right now if we'd meant to kill you?"

"You left me alive on purpose? Why? What do you want from me?"

She clucks her tongue, shaking her head. "It's obvious, I should think. A warning, a reminder of how easily we can tear your world apart piece by piece... Take your pick."

"But _why_?"

"The man you called Mr. Smith contacted you. Several times in the past year, in fact. He has—excuse me—he _had _files that could prove detrimental to my current employer. I need to know where those files are."

Her words bring up a vaguely remembered conversation in his room that he now recalls with a sinister light cast upon it. That Sophia had been in his study, had seen the evidence of his investigation on Kate's shooting makes him sick.

Playing with dynamite, she'd called it.

Oh God. What if she'd been working with the Dragon even then?

Everything is spinning too fast for him to catch up with. He tries to buy time by focusing on the one thing he doesn't have to think about. "Had the files? What do you mean _had, _past tense? Did you kill him?"

"Rick, really. Leave the acting to your mother. You've never been very good at it."

That pulls a surprised snort out of Kate, and Castle looks at her in consternation. Did her time down here knock a few screws loose? Not that he won't love her no matter her mental state, but—

Oh, wow. They're _both_ a little out of it, aren't they?

Kate attempts a small shrug. "She's right. Your acting sucks." Then her voice hardens, and he's so proud of her, so very proud of her, because despite the fact that she's the one who's been beaten and bound to a pole, everything about her screams control. "Which is why she can believe you when you say that you don't know anything about Smith's files."

Sophia breathes a laugh. "Detective, I see your mental acuity has not suffered despite your unfortunate situation. However, wit is not going to get you out of this."

Wow. She says it like Kate had gotten all those bruises and contusions on her body by accidentally falling down an elevator shaft or something.

Pushing aside his annoyance at Sophia's blasé attitude toward Kate's injuries, Castle forces himself to focus on the matter at hand. Castle doesn't have to lie. He really _doesn't_ know anything about the files' location. "Look, Sophia, you've seen my murder board. That's all I had, and I already deleted the file on Kate's shooting. There's nothing there that could possibly threaten your employer."

To his surprise, it's Kate who reacts first. "She's seen your murder board? Your murder board with _my_ shooting on it? And you _deleted_ me?" she asks, incredulity layered thickly in her tone.

"I deleted your _file_. And somehow I don't think this is the right time to be harping on those issues right now, Kate," he tells her under his breath, concern a flickering light in the back of his head.

Kate's focus is off, and she's taking everything…almost casually, as if she hadn't been kidnapped and locked up for more than a day. If it were him, it'd be one thing, but Kate doesn't use humor as her coping mechanism. She analyzes, weighs and balances a situation to figure out the optimal solution. He remembers vividly when they'd awaken in the dark room cuffed together and how she'd chastised him for making light of the situation.

The way she's treating this is just not right. He hopes it's not a head injury that's making her take things with such eerie tranquility.

He shakes it off. Not right now. Right now they have to figure out how to get her out of here without Sophia putting a bullet in one or both of them first.

To Sophia, he says, "You should know that there's a team of police sweeping the building right now, and it's just a matter of time before they find us down here. So why don't you just do yourself a favor and get out while you still have the chance?"

Sophia clicks her tongue. "Really, Rick. I thought you'd know me better by now. Not only did you walk yourself right into what you knew was a trap, you brought your buddies along with you. I really should thank you, actually, for making my job so simple. Some judicious use of C4 to emulate an unfortunate gas pipe explosion in what was supposed to be an abandoned warehouse will go a long way to ridding us of many of these pesky annoyances."

She makes a couple of gestures to the two men standing in the doorway behind her that Castle just now notices. One he recognizes from the ambush in Kate's apartment. The man's cold gray eyes flicker over them briefly, and Castle can't tell whether it's disdain or disappointment that he won't be the one to finish them off.

The two men nod tersely at her silent commands, Castle's skin crawls with the knowledge that they're about to blow up the building with Gates, Ryan, Esposito and their teams still in it.

Gates was right. Ambush with numbers or explosives. His only hope is that they've had enough time to uncover the C4.

He musters up as much false confidence as he can. "No one will buy that. Not when the captain of the 12th Precinct herself is leading the squad. No one will believe it was an accident."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong. Perception, Rick. It's all about how the story is told. You should know. You're the writer. There are any number of ways to manipulate public perception into believing _exactly_ what we want them to believe."

Sophia takes a step closer to them, the muzzle of her gun raised and pointed toward Kate. All her previous good humor vanishes until all that's left is the frigid cold of the mercenary that she is. "Enough stalling, Rick. Where are the files?"

Castle makes to cover Kate with his body, but Sophia puts a bullet in his leg before he's moved an inch.

"Castle!"

Kate's hoarse shout is all that comes through the tunneling white noise of agony that envelops him in its harsh embrace. White hot shocks of pain jolt through his leg and course through him until his whole body trembles with the excruciating dance of frayed nerves. He presses down on the injury with his hands and he almost blacks out at the mere touch.

Damn it, two bullets in two days. He's really going for a record, isn't he?

"We don't have anything, damn you!" Kate insists, an edge of hysteria replacing her unnatural calm from earlier as she pulls and yanks violently against her restraints. "Castle has nothing to do with this! If you want to shoot someone, I'm right here, damn it! I'm right here!"

One of Castle's bloodied hands makes its way to the hem of Kate's dirtied shirt, and he fists it tightly, yanking at it with a savage strength born from pain and adrenaline. He jerks hard enough to almost give her whiplash, and she stares at him, a feral glaze gleaming in the dark forest of her one good eye.

He grits his teeth and through heaving pants of breaths manages to command, "Shut. Up."

He can't get any more words out, but this is good. His getting shot is so much better than Kate getting shot. He needs her to not talk and let him get shot for her.

Sophia shakes her head pityingly at him. "This is why you should never fall in love, Rick. It makes you do stupid things. Now, I know you know more than this. Where are the files?"

"I don't know!"

Sophia once again trains her gun on Kate, and this time Castle knows that she won't change the trajectory to be a nonfatal shot in the leg. "Last chance, Rick. Where—"

A deafening _boom_ rocks the foundation beneath their feet, and the world narrows to concrete and plaster raining down on their heads.

* * *

_._

_._

_._

_A/N: Apparently evil!me isn't done with her turn yet. At least I can (almost) guarantee that the next chapter won't end on a cliffhanger. :D_


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: I have several apologies to make. First, I'm sorry that there's been such a long delay with this update. __This chapter went a completely different direction from what I'd anticipated, though I'm happy with where it's taken this story. __The reason it's taken me so long to post this, however, is because of the second thing I need to apologize for. Namely, that this is actually not the last chapter. That being the case, __I wanted to make sure that the interval between this chapter and the next chapter is as short as possible because of the third apology I have to make...You'll know what I'm apologizing for at the end of the chapter._

_Fourth apology: I'm trying really hard to finish up this story within the next week, so I've neglected thanking people individually for reviewing. Sorry about that, and I hope you all know that every review I get makes me feel all fluttery inside. :D_

_Thanks for reading!_

* * *

Chapter Nine

* * *

When Castle returns to consciousness, it's to pitch blackness all around him.

He's aware of enough to know that the pain is gone, but that's not necessarily a good thing. His body trembles uncontrollably, and his pulse taps out a rapid tattoo beneath his skin. His skin feels clammy and cold, his shallow breaths not bringing in enough oxygen.

Distantly, he knows what this is, has done enough research on injuries and wounds and the human body to know that he's sinking rapidly into hypovolemic shock. He knows that his body will quickly begin to overcompensate for the slow circulation of oxygen due to blood loss by causing him to hyperventilate, and that hyperventilation will cause his blood vessels to constrict and his pulse to kick up, even as each pump of his heart gets weaker and weaker in its endeavor to fill his arteries and capillaries with oxygenated blood.

The medical details trip over themselves in his head, even as he tries to focus his thoughts on something other than the fact that his body will eventually shut down itself.

He prays, oh God, he prays that whatever happens to him, Kate gets out of this alive.

…

Javier Esposito has seen a lot in his life. He served as a sniper during his time with the Special Forces, then went through the rounds at the NYPD—first with Organized Crime as a uniform, then onto ESU and a stint at Robbery before landing at Homicide.

Getting caught in a hail of enemy fire, ambushes, hostage situations…he's gone through them all with barely a blink of his eyes.

He's never felt more afraid than the moment the abandoned warehouse goes up in flames.

Beside him, he can feel Ryan stumble back, not from the force of the explosion but from the sledgehammer of shock that ripples through both of them.

Then they're moving, the synchronicity of their partnership every bit as intact as it had been before everything had fallen apart, before Esposito had chosen loyalty and Ryan had chosen protocol. A distant part of Esposito's mind understands that he and Beckett had flirted dangerously close with the line of vigilantism and that Ryan's actions that day had saved Beckett's life—the lives of their whole team because if one of the four went down, they all did. But even though Esposito can acknowledge the rightness of Ryan's decision on an intellectual level, he can't accept it on the emotional.

But none of that matters right now. None of that contention will be worth a damn if they don't find Castle and Beckett alive underneath the wreckage.

They move as one.

…

There are very few people whom Victoria Gates inherently trusts. So when she receives the text from Senator Holden's contact just when her team has made entry, Gates calls back her team immediately.

When everyone has retreated to the cruisers to regroup, and she doesn't see Richard Castle, she knows that once again, the writer had disregarded her commands and entered the building on his own.

When the ground beneath their feet rocks with the force of the explosion, she's consumed with only one thought: failure.

Gates, unperturbed, unruffled Gates, for the first time in her life stands paralyzed by the sight before her.

Innocents. She is supposed to protect the innocents.

Ryan and Esposito are the first to react, the first ones to run up to the building spitting smoke and fire screaming the names of their teammates, their partners. Their friends.

Her people. Her people that she has failed.

No, she refuses to believe that until she has seen them herself. God knows that Castle and Beckett have gotten themselves into more than one sticky situation in her short tenure as captain at the 12th, and they have survived every time. She will not doubt their ridiculous fortune now.

Her moment of doubt past, Gates moves swiftly after Ryan and Esposito and is only a couple of yards behind them when they see a man dressed in black emerge from the building. Ashes and chunks of concrete pepper his dark, shortly buzzed hair and streaks of smeared blood on his face paint a vivid contrast from eyes the color of cold, gray steel.

"They're in the basement, around back. I tried to make sure the explosion wouldn't collapse the whole structure on them, but C4 is hard to control," he says, as if walking out of burning buildings is a common occurrence for him.

"Who the hell are you?" demands Esposito.

The man, obviously of some sort of military training, flicks his disturbingly cool eyes over the former Special Forces vet. "Do you really want to stand here interrogating me when your buddies are somewhere in there?"

Ryan and Esposito exchange a glance, torn once again between the desire to find the rest of their team and the desire to deck the man who'd put them in danger.

Gates resolves their dilemma. "Ryan, Esposito, call this in to the FDNY. Then go find our people."

The detectives hesitate for only a fraction of a second. "Yes, sir," they reply in tandem, before kicking their teams into action with hoarse shouts and the ring of command that sometimes makes Gates wonder why neither of them have actively requested to be put in charge of their own team of detectives.

No, that's not completely true. She knows precisely the reason. Beckett and her boys—writer included—are more than a team. They are a family unit, and the four of them together just…works.

She deliberately takes her time before turning her attention to the somewhat unexpected stranger. "You're the one who texted me to stay away from the building."

He nods. "Captain Gates, I presume?"

"And you're Senator Holden's contact inside."

"_One_ of his contacts."

"He's changed his mind, I see."

"The senator mentioned how he can't be responsible for not saving a life when he had it in his power to do so."

Gates lips quirk just slightly. "I thought he might." She gestures at the building. "Will you be able to go back to Kurtz without alerting him to your true status?"

"I should. There's no reason to suspect me. My…partner unfortunately didn't make it out of the explosion in time," he explains drily, the blood on his hands belying the truth of that statement. "The mercenary he hired—Turner—is either dead or incapacitated by the explosion, so the cops were able to take her in. I was lucky enough to escape the building before the NYPD came in looking for their comrades."

The cover story is more truth than fiction, and Gates has more than enough experience to know that those are the most believable of lies. Unfortunately, they both know that having a believable cover story will do him no good if the Kurtz's paranoia supersedes his need to keep this man around.

"I appreciate your risking so much to help my people, Mr..." she trails off purposefully.

He doesn't answer her unspoken question. Instead, he says, "It's probably best if you don't mention me to Richard Castle. He might be having some sore feelings about the fact that I put a bullet in him."

Gates smothers an inappropriate well of amusement (apparently Richard Castle has influenced _all _of them to a certain degree). "If only we could all do the same," she says instead.

The corner of his lips flicker, but there's dark heaviness that surrounds him that does not lift. This man, whoever he is and whoever he was, still has a long and arduous journey ahead of him. She respects his dedication to a mission that will likely see him dead before he can enjoy the fruits of his labor.

She salutes him. "On behalf of the NYPD, Detective Beckett, Richard Castle, and everyone else who will never know what you've done for them, I thank you for your service to this country."

He returns her salute, and by the time she has rejoined her team clearing out the rubble, she knows that she will never see him again.

…

Kate blinks open her eyes to find herself staring into a vast expanse of nothingness.

She's sprawled out uncomfortably on her side, her legs twisted beneath her and her arms pinned behind her. She can only assume that the explosion managed to take down the pipe she'd spent hours to rattle loose, but the extra pressure and the awkward angle causes the zip-ties to dig even further into her tender flesh.

A heavy weight presses her into the hard concrete, and it's not until she feels the ragged breath against her hair that she realizes that it's Castle's unconscious body draped over her.

"Castle?" Her voice catches in a harsh cough that rattles her lungs and drags plaster particles up her throat. She tries to shift, but Castle is too heavy for her to move with her limited leverage. "Castle, come on. Wake up."

She untangles her leg from beneath her, and jostles Castle in the process. She freezes when she feels the thick, sticky liquid coating her lower body, and she remembers. He's bleeding from two holes in his body that never should have been there—wouldn't be there if it weren't for her. Stupid idiot that he is, he took the bullet meant for her, and even now, even now his unconscious body has taken the brunt of everything that's fallen in on them.

Her breath catches on the wretched sob that wants to escape from her throat. Stupid man is going to get himself killed for her, and she can't—absolutely cannot—survive that.

She can't even turn around, can't move get her arms free, and Castle is still draped over her bleeding his life out and she can't do a single damn thing about it. God, she's never felt as helpless as she does now, and he's dying dying _dying _and why can't she do anything?

"Castle, Rick, please. Please, wake up and look at me. Please. Do you hear me? You need to wake up now. I wanna hear all your crazy theories, spend the summer with you in the Hamptons. Hell, maybe I'll even go skinny-dipping with you in the ocean. Just, oh God, I want _everything_ with you, but please, Rick, please, _please_ wake up. I can't do this without you, Castle. I can't, I can't, I can't."

She's blubbering now, but she doesn't care because he's just right here, but he's still so far away and—

"I love you, Richard Castle. I love you. Do you hear me? You can't die on me now because I love you so damn much, and if you die, I'll shoot you myself. Castle, _please_."

Her face is a mess of tears and dirt and dust and she chokes on her tears and God this can't be the end. Please, this can't be the end.

No, she won't let this be the end. She can't let this be the end.

"Come on, Castle. Don't you dare give up on me now. Don't you dare," she growls as she struggles to get her knees underneath her so that she can push up against Castle's weight. His skin feels cold and clammy where it touches hers, and she fights back a wave of panic.

_Focus, Beckett. Focus._

With her legs coiled beneath her, she pushes up and winces in pain for him when Castle rolls off of her to land with a heavy thud beside her. Her shoulders scream with the strain of it all, but at least she has more freedom of movement now.

She doesn't know how much of the room has collapsed around them, the light bulb obviously having been shattered by the explosion, nor does she know if they've been buried beneath the rubble. She just knows that she's their best chance at getting out of this alive.

She sits up on her knees, and her head spins wildly in response. She slams her eyes shut as she almost collapses back onto the ground. Oh God. She's so dizzy, it feels like the floor is spinning up to meet her. She has to focus on settling her breathing for a long minute and when she feels like the world has stopped being tossed about like a toy boat out at sea, she takes some time to reassess.

Her arms are still tethered to the pole now lodged diagonally across the rubble. With that part of her still tied down, she can't do anything more.

The knife. Castle had a knife on him. Find the knife.

She drops back down to the floor, her hands and feet anxiously casting about for the knife, but she finds nothing.

Another dead end.

"Goddamn it!" she screams in frustration, the small room absorbing the sound waves like she doesn't exist. What else can she do? What the hell else can she do?

"Help!" she yells. "Someone help us! Damn it please, someone help him," she finds herself sobbing, tears that she'd thought her body too dehydrated to produce racing tracks of dirt down her cheeks. "Please…somebody help him."

…

"Beckett! Castle!"

Kate's so lost in her despair that she doesn't hear it at first.

But the scrape of concrete being pulled away and dumped to the side eventually penetrates the fog of helplessness that she'd surrounded herself in.

"Beckett! Castle!"

Ryan. That's Ryan's voice.

"Beckett! Castle!"

And Esposito.

Her boys. Her team. Her brothers.

Oh, thank God. They're here.

"Here!" she yells, her throat raw from tears and screaming. She doesn't care. Her boys are here. Her ever reliable brothers are here. "Espo! Ryan! We're here!"

She nudges Castle. "Wake up, Castle. Espo and Ryan are here. They're gonna get us out of here, but you need to wake up because they're gonna rag on us forever and a day about how they saved our asses again. I need you to wake up so you can back me up, Castle. Come on, Rick, please."

She hunches over him protectively, and she just needs him to wake up now. "Please, Rick. Open your eyes for me. Please."

He doesn't wake up.

Not when the rubble has cleared and a shaft of late afternoon sun slants into her eyes.

Not when Ryan and Esposito stumble down into their holed out crater to cut her loose from that goddamn pipe.

Not when the stretchers are brought in to lift them both out of the demolition of the room.

Not when they administer a saline bolus for him via intravenous drip as quickly as they possibly can.

Not when an unconscious Sophia Turner is secured to a third stretcher under the sharp eagle eyes of Captain Gates.

Not when the ambulances tear their way down the streets to the nearest hospital.

He doesn't wake up, and her heart is a lead weight in her chest.

* * *

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_A/N: __Don't freak out too much! The next chapter is coming soon. _

___And yes, my third apology is for making this a cliff-hanger when I said that I was almost positive I wouldn't. The tone of the next chapter is just way too different for me to end this anywhere but here. ______I've already written about 90% of the next chapter (and it's a long one), so that should be up sometime tomorrow. Again, I'm sorry for breaking several of my assurances. I don't like not following through on what I've said, and I think this is a lesson for me to remember not to promise anything in my author's notes so that I don't inadvertently go back on my word. :P_


	10. Chapter 10

_**EDIT 7.10.12: Sorry if this popped up in your alerts as being a new chapter again. I took it down and reposted it because it wasn't showing up in the archive as having been updated. Epilogue should be out by the end of the week. Thanks everyone!**  
_

_A/N: Alrighty, folks. As promised, here is the next chapter. And yes, this actually is the last chapter. There will be an epilogue to tie up loose ends, but the main story itself is complete. _

_Thank you so much for all the interest and support you all have shown this story. __It's been a lot of fun for me writing it, so I'm honored that so many of you have hung on for the ride._

* * *

Chapter Ten

* * *

It's been three days since her dad and Detective Beckett were dug out of their living graves.

Three days since they brought him into the hospital in a coma from which he still hasn't awaken once.

Three days of practically living in the hospital as a stream of visitors come in and out of Dad's room.

Detectives Ryan and Esposito drop by often. They always come together, but even Alexis can sense the all-is-not-right vibe between them. She thinks they make the effort to show up together on purpose though—for her dad's benefit. To show him that everything is back to normal and to show him that it's his turn to make an effort to return things to the usual state of affairs.

Alexis appreciates the sentiment.

Others from the 12th precinct come by to drop off get-well cards and flowers as well, and Alexis is amazed to see that a lot of them genuinely care. Even the aloof Captain Gates has come to visit more than once.

She'd always thought of the police station as just another workplace for her dad and that it would be filled with the same manner of strictly business, no-nonsense professionals that inhabited Black Pawn. Instead, she realizes that during these past four years, her dad has become a part of a family.

A part of her had thought that the cops over at the 12th were being careless with a civilian's life, her _dad's_ life, when they let him shadow them on their work, but she's coming to see now that there's nothing careless about it. They have his back and trust him to have theirs. It's almost like his partnership with Detective Beckett, only on a larger scale. He might not carry the badge, but after four years of working cases and proving his worth, they've accepted his as one of them.

Of course, Paula and Gina come by as well. While Dad often likens them to banshees with a sophisticated exterior, the truth is that both of them do care for him beyond the sales he brings in. Gina in particular looks stricken at the sight of him lying comatose on the hospital bed. Neither publicist nor publisher is very good at showing the softer emotions, however, and they leave soon after dropping off an extravagant bouquet of flowers.

Jim Beckett arrives at the hospital late on the first day, lamenting the bad traffic from his cabin to Manhattan for the delay. He's relieved to see his daughter mostly well—even though the news of her kidnapping had nearly crippled him—and the concern in his eyes for Dad's well-being translates itself into practicality by his insistence on taking Martha and Alexis home to rest every night and back to the hospital early in the mornings.

As for Detective Beckett…

Beckett has to stay in the hospital to be monitored for a day, though she spends most of that time sitting by Dad's bed rather than in her own room. Even after she's officially released with the admonition to drink plenty of water and liquids with high electrolyte content, Beckett hasn't gone home, choosing instead to camp out in Dad's room.

There are moments when Alexis is still tempted to blame Beckett for her dad's comatose state, but Alexis finds that it's near impossible to hate someone whose despair is so consuming.

Aside from that one and only time that Beckett had broken down in tears and apologies and "It's all my fault," her statuesque frame crumpled into a ball of agony as they waited for Dad to come out of surgery, Beckett has been mostly self-contained. She doesn't wear her emotions on her sleeve, but Alexis sees the deep lines of worry etched onto the former detective's face, the lively spark of determination in her eyes dulled.

Beckett doesn't have to wail and tear at her hair for Alexis to know that she's hurting inside.

Beckett doesn't speak much to anyone.

Well, no, that's not true. She talks a lot to Dad, but other than those rare moments when Alexis catches Beckett chatting amiably with him like he isn't in a coma, Beckett has been morosely quiet.

It's taken her some time, but Alexis finally understands that what she'd perceived as such a destructive love that her dad has for Beckett is returned in kind.

Kate Beckett without Richard Castle is just as lost and broken as Richard Castle is without Kate Beckett.

Alexis should be terrified by the devastating power of such a thing, but instead, she's oddly comforted.

Her dad has a huge heart—one that people don't always realize is easily bruised. All this time Alexis has been terrified that her dad loves Beckett more than she does him, but it's only now as Alexis witnesses the single-minded focus that Beckett turns on her father that Alexis realizes there is no such thing as who loves whom more in their relationship.

There aren't any levels of love, and they're not even really _in love_ so much as they _are _love.

And it sounds so cheesy, but it's kind of amazing to see in action. Alexis has never really seen devotion like Beckett's to her dad before.

Well, that's not true. She's sees the very same devotion from her dad to Beckett.

It's…enough, she thinks, enough to know that Beckett loves Dad so very much. It helps.

It's why she can accept that this thing between her dad and Beckett is nothing so mundane as a _relationship_, but rather the meeting of two puzzle pieces meant to interlock. They could stand alone, could go through life without even knowing the other exists, all the while aware that as individuals, they're jagged around the edges and not quite complete. But the moment their pieces come together, a new and beautiful picture emerges.

Alexis may be Rick Castle's daughter, but Kate Beckett will forever be the other half of his soul.

And whether or not Alexis approves won't really change a thing except for how much misery she'll put all three of them through, so why not make things simple and admit that this is the way things were always meant to be? No matter what dangers they encounter or obstacles they must overcome, as long as they're together, Alexis thinks that maybe—just maybe—everything will be okay.

It's with this thought that Alexis walks into the her dad's hospital room this morning knowing that Beckett had stayed the night in a chair by his bedside despite her own injuries and have a genuine smile on her face for the exhausted detective.

Hi, Kate," Alexis greets softly. It's funny. Out loud, Alexis calls her Kate now, but in her mind, she's still Detective Beckett. She doesn't think it's an issue of a level of comfort so much as it is that to Alexis, Kate Beckett has always been this larger than life figure. But right now…

These three days, perhaps more than anything else, has shown Alexis that even the greatest have their moments of weakness.

Beckett startles a little, having been staring listlessly into space, and Alexis can almost see her pulling her mind back to the here and now with great effort. Alexis wonders sometimes what Beckett thinks about in these moments, but things between them are still stilted enough that Alexis doesn't think it's her place to ask.

"Alexis. Hi." Beckett glances at the clock on the opposite wall. Her long fingers toy with the ends of the bandages around her wrists. She's fortunate that there had been no permanent nerve damage done to her hands, but it's likely that the scars born from the nylon zip-ties that had abraded her skin and dug into flesh will never fade completely. "Good morning."

Alexis hasn't gotten used to this dazed Beckett yet. The Detective Beckett Alexis knows is always so self-assured, so confident in herself that it's such a shock to see her like this, so lost in her head. It makes Alexis feel like the adult, and though she's spent her whole life kind of being the adult in the house, this particular dynamic is uncomfortable. She…misses the other Beckett.

"How's Dad today?" Alexis asks, purposefully drawing their attention away from each other and onto their greatest common interest.

"He's doing well. His vitals are all steady. Just…waiting for him to wake up."

"He'll wake up soon. He's way too fidgety to stay in one place for much longer."

Beckett smiles faintly. "Yeah."

Alexis takes a deep breath and finally says what she should have said from the start. "It's not your fault, you know."

Beckett doesn't pretend like she doesn't know what Alexis is talking about.

"Yes, it is. It was my obsession with my mom's case that brought this on Castle, on you and everyone else. Even when I let go, it's not enough. How could this not be my fault?" She speaks softly, but with a thread of firmness that is vaguely reminiscent of the old Beckett. She sounds like she really believes this to be the truth.

"You said it yourself. You let go. It's not on you that there's a maniac out there trying to silence everyone that's a threat to him. In fact," Alexis couldn't believe she's saying this, but she can't _not_ say it, "you wouldn't be the woman that I respect so much if you just stood by and let this guy do whatever he wants."

"Alexis?"

"I really didn't like you for a while after your shooting." Alexis hears Beckett suck in a harsh breath, but she forces herself to continue. "I was mad at Dad for putting himself in danger all the time, but I was angry with you too because you made it so easy for him to be selfless. My dad has always had that hero complex, you know? It's not because he feels like he has to rescue everyone; it's just that he has this huge heart that wants to help everyone. And I know he has the opportunity to do that with you, which is great, but at the same time, he's so damn reckless."

Beckett shakes her head. "Alexis, your dad is a lot smarter than you give him credit for. A lot of what he does looks reckless, but he's actually not that careless. He knows what he's doing, even if it doesn't always seem like it."

"Maybe, but to me, it just looked like he kept on sticking his neck out there, as if just daring someone to hack it off. And then whenever you or your mom's case came up, it was like he threw on these blinders until all he could see was you. And I think I resented that," Alexis admits, looking up to meet deep pools of hazel.

Beckett speaks her next words with great deliberateness. "You'll always be the most important person in Castle's life. You know that."

The corners of Alexis' mouth flick up wryly. "That's the thing. I'm not."

"Alexis—"

"No, no. Hear me out. It's not a bad thing. It's really not. Dad and I... We have a really strong relationship. He and Gram are everything to me. But...one of these days, I'm going to find The One for _me_, and then my dad won't be the most important person in my life either. That's how it is. I understand that now. You and my dad…you guys have something that's so incredible to witness. It's…real. And I think a lot of the reason it can be real is because of who you and my dad are as individuals. You're so different, but at the same time not, and it all just kind of…works."

In a moment of impulse, Alexis reaches out to grab Beckett's hand in hers. The older woman's fingers are long and slender, and yet there's strength there when she squeezes back.

Alexis continues, "I guess…I just wanted to say that I'm glad it's you. So, please don't run away? Please don't think this is entirely your fault and then try to protect my dad by separating yourself from him. You won't protect him that way; you'll only hurt him."

"I wasn't going to walk away."

"I know. But you pull everything into yourself, just like you're doing now. And that kind of emotional retreat is just as difficult for him to handle as it is if you were to walk away."

…

The three days Castle stays in a coma are the worst three days of Kate's life.

They'd both been whisked to the hospital; they'd both been hooked up to IV drips; they'd both seen the interior of the emergency rooms.

But only _she_ had come out with mostly superficial injuries.

She thinks back to that single morning they had together before everything went sideways, and she can hardly believe that it had only been four days ago that they'd woken up together with such beautiful hope for the future in front of them. She can't help but wonder if maybe they're not meant for peace.

Or maybe _she's _the one who's a curse on his life. Ever since she met him, what has she done but drag him into dangerous situation after dangerous situation with gunfights and serial killers and apartments blowing up and locked freezers and dirty bombs and drowning in the Hudson and starving tigers and this? Now he's recovering from two gunshot wounds and massive blood loss, and she hates the unfairness that he's the one in critical condition when this was all brought about because of her.

She should walk away; she should leave this man to live in peace, but God help her, she can't.

She can't forget the wondrous awe tempered by shocked disbelief in him when she showed up at his doorstep four nights ago begging for his forgiveness and just wanting _him_. She can't forget the marvelous fires that burned so brightly between them as they physically manifested the bond that's connected them from the start. She can't forget the relief, the giddy happiness in his bright, joy-crinkled eyes when he woke her with his butterfly kisses, both of them knowing deep down that this is _it_ for them.

Most of all, she can't forget the love, the beautiful, overwhelming love that simultaneously threatened to drown her in its abundance and grounded her with its _realness_.

She can't ignore the knowledge that while he might be safer physically with her out of the picture, emotionally he might not ever heal from her betrayal should she leave to protect him.

And he would see it as a betrayal.

Alexis was right this morning.

Kate can't leave, can't make a strategic retreat because everything about their relationship defies logic.

Logic tells her that he's safer without her. Her heart tells her that he will break without her.

But it's a misery to see him like this, with tubes and wires and medical equipment all around making him look almost _small_. Physically, Castle has a tall and broad frame that makes her feel dwarfed even in her heels, but it's his larger-than-life personality that just takes over a room and fills it with his presence. To see him lying so deathly still on the hospital bed serves a blow that she couldn't have ever anticipated.

Kate startles when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She glances up to see Captain Gates looking down at her with dark, inscrutable eyes. And yet, there's a compassion there, hidden deep inside that Kate is starting to recognize more and more often.

Kate hasn't heard all the details of what happened between her partner and her captain, but it's enough for her to know that Gates had taken Castle under her wing during Kate's disappearance. She will be forever grateful to the captain for being the voice of reason and not letting Castle go rogue on his own.

"Captain," Kate greets with more respect than she's ever afforded Gates. It's a shame, Kate thinks, because she has always thought of herself as a good judge of character, yet somehow she'd been so blinded by her own personal grudges that she'd missed the thirst for justice nestled deep beneath Gates' bureaucratic collar.

"Beckett," Gates returns in kind. "How are you doing?"

"A couple of hairline fractures along my ribs, mild concussion, and a few scrapes and bruises. Nothing serious."

_Nothing like Castle_, she means, but neither of them voices the thought.

Gates gestures with her head toward the unconscious writer on the bed. "And Castle?"

Kate takes in a deep breath and releases it in a slow stream. It's an explanation that she's repeated dozens of times to dozens of different people, and each time, she finds the words harder to push out of her mouth. "Good. Steady. The doctors assure us that his body just needs some time to recuperate and that he'll wake up at any moment now."

"That's excellent news." Gates pauses, and it's the first time Kate has ever seen her so uncertain. "Listen, Detec—Beckett—Kate. I think I owe you an apology."

Kate's eyes widen comically. "I'm sorry?"

"That's my line, I believe," Gates says with a wry smile. "There have been things that I was not at liberty to discuss with you prior to this, but there are some things that I think you deserve to know."

A cold shiver chases up Kate's spine. "What facts?"

"Your mother's case. Captain Montgomery's involvement. Your shooting. Mr. Smith. The Dragon. We've been investigating all along."

If Kate wasn't already sitting, her legs would have given out on her. "What?" she whispers breathlessly.

"If you truly want to know, I have been cleared to tell you. But only on one condition."

God, this is crazy. Absolutely bat-shit crazy. Kate's knuckles whiten as she fists the material of her pants tightly. "What condition?"

"That you return to the precinct and promise to not withhold any more evidence as you work with us to finally bring the Dragon down. We can't tell you these things as a civilian if you're not willing to cooperate with us."

Everything stops for a beat, and then all the air rushes out of Kate's lungs in a painful _whoosh_.

This is everything Kate ever wanted, all the answers she'd sacrificed so much for. And now she has the chance to help catch the bastard behind it all. She should be thrilled. It shouldn't even be a question that she'll accept Gates' offer.

And _yet_.

Kate turns to watch the slow up and down motion of Castle's chest as he breathes, each lungful of oxygen a blessing and a reminder of how much she could have lost.

If she'd had any lingering doubts after their single night together before everything had gone to hell about giving up her mother's case and giving up her badge, they're completely gone now. Eviscerated by reality of her captivity and his too-close escape from death.

Nothing—not even personally throwing the cuffs on her mother's murderer—will be worth it if she has to sacrifice Castle in order to do it.

She can't go back. She sees that now. Her life as a cop is too closely entwined with her quest for her mother's murderer. She can't put Castle in the line of fire again, not when he's proved again and again that he will always prize her life above his own. She can't risk him.

Her choice is made.

"With all due respect, Captain, I cannot return."

Gates sets dark eyes on her, studying her, and Kate returns her gaze steadily.

She won't regret this. She won't.

"Ever since you made detective, I've been keeping an eye on you. Do you know why?"

Kate is so ready to stand her ground, to protect this new life that she and Castle will build together that Gates' question throws her completely, and the tongue-in-cheek answer tumbles out before she can think about it. "Because I broke your record as the youngest female to make detective?"

"Well, there is that," Gates says with a small laugh. She shakes her head and sobers. "I saw your tenacity, Kate. Initially, I'd mistaken it for ambition. I was hoping to groom you as my protégé, you know. But then the more I saw of you, the more I heard of the exploits of Detective Kate Beckett, the more I realized that what made you such a good cop—no, what made you an excellent cop—was that you cared so very deeply.

"It is because you care so much that you are driven to give every case your all. It is because you care that you could look outside the box in your quest for truth and not go with the easy solve. It is because you care that you pay meticulous attention to ensuring that evidence is processed correctly and procedure always followed because you know that the only way the families of our victims will get true closure is to see the people who tore their world apart get convicted in a court of law. It is because you care that you choose to believe in justice, to trust the system that had once failed you. I admire that about you. But I wonder if _you've _forgotten why you're such a good cop.

"You think that returning as a cop means that you'll lose yourself again, or even worse, you'll lose Castle. You think that your drive to know the truth means that you can't both investigate your mother's case and still have the personal life that you want. You think that the two are mutually exclusive."

Kate sits back, her expression inscrutable. "Aren't they?"

"That's not a question I can answer for you. But I can say this. As cops, we work to find justice for those who have been wronged."

"We speak for the dead when the wicked have robbed them of their voices," Kate whispers, then clears her throat to add, "Captain Montgomery told me that."

"A wise man who made a foolish mistake," Gates comments, not unkindly. "Look, if you don't want to be involved with your mother's case, then maybe that's for the best. But the way I see it, Kate, you have a special skill. You have the ability to give the dead their voices back. You're good at it. You and team. Maybe the best I've ever seen. And yes, I'm including Castle in that, though I'll thank you to never mention that to him when he wakes."

Kate laughs softly at that. "God, he'll be insufferable if he ever hears that."

Captain and former detective share a small smile, and for a brief moment, they are just two women who know what it means to lose a loved one to corruption. Just two women who have dedicated their lives to seeing justice upheld. Two women who have seen the darkness of the human condition and yet have found their own points of redemption.

Then the moment is gone, and the sympathetic Victoria Gates is once again shuttered behind the tough exterior of Captain Iron Gates.

"Just think about it, Beckett."

And then she's gone.

Kate stares after her for a long moment, her mind a riot of thoughts and possibilities. She knows that a lot of what Gates said is right. The problem isn't the job; the problem is whether Kate has the ability to separate the job from her obsession.

The _problem_ is that she doesn't know how.

"I told you I'd melt Captain Permafrost."

The rough edges of his unused voice startle her so badly that she almost falls out of her chair.

Kate swings her head over to hospital bed to find familiar blue eyes staring back at her, the light of amusement a thin veil over an abundance of love and affection.

"Castle," she breathes.

"Kate," he greets, as if he didn't just wake up from a three-day coma. As if he hadn't had her worried completely out of her mind. And God, he makes her want to strangle him and kiss him and—

She's tripping over her own feet as she stumbles to his side and then her hands are shaking as she brushes her fingers against his cheeks and over his forehead. He's warm and the puff of his breath against her skin is glorious. Her fingers dig themselves into his hair and then her lips are on his, a hard, desperate kiss that makes her heart kick violently in her chest when she feels him reciprocate.

She pulls away quickly, afraid to deprive him of oxygen for too long, but she can't stop pressing little kisses all across his face and along his hairline before she finally buries her face in the crook of his neck.

"_Castle_," she gasps on a sob.

"I'm here, Kate. I'm here," he croons soothingly into her hair. His hand is a wonderful, heavy weight on the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair with comforting strokes, and God he was the one who was unconscious, yet he's comforting her rather than the other way around.

She doesn't know how long she stays like that, with her body hovering awkwardly over his and her face pressed against his shoulders, but _oh _it feels so good to hear the low murmur of his voice and know that he's back, he's back he's back and he—

She sits up suddenly as the thought strikes her.

"Oh jeez, Castle. Are you telling me that the first thing you did after you wake up from a three-day coma is eavesdrop on my conversation? What the hell is wrong with you?"

He grins, and oh—_oh!—_her heart skips a beat and then kicks into a gallop. His smile is so tired and wan and beautiful because he's awake and he's _smiling_.

Then he speaks, and her chest is so full that she thinks it might explode. "Yeah, I love you too."

"You stupid ass," she grumbles with a glare that really isn't all that effective because tears are leaking down her face, and she goes to smack him for being such an inconsiderate jerk, but her hands don't listen to her and they end up snaking around his shoulders and her face buries itself once again in the perfect place between his shoulder and his neck. His arms come around her automatically and they lay heavy across her back and oh God the weight of them is wonderful.

"I love you. I love you, you stupid, stupid idiot," she murmurs fiercely in his ear.

Though she knows it must tax him physically, she doesn't fight him when his arms tighten around her and pull her upper body flush against him.

They're battered and they're bruised, but things have never been so right.


	11. Epilogue

_A/N: This is what I affectionately call the epilogue that just wouldn't end. I thought I'd be done under 1000 words, but then I just kept writing and writing and finding a loose end here and then a loose end there until I finally completed this monster of an epilogue. Considering it's about a fifth as long as the rest of the story, I'm not even sure it should be called an epilogue. Lol._

_Anyhow, I'm so sorry this took forever and a day to get out. Obviously, my definition of "by the end of the week" needs some work. Thank you once again for everyone who has supported this story, whether it be through alerts, favorites, or reviews. Here (finally) is the epilogue. Enjoy!_

* * *

Epilogue

* * *

The last thing Castle expects to see when he wakes up from his afternoon nap (sleeping seems to be all he's capable of doing these days) is Senator Andrew Holden sitting by his hospital bed.

The implications of his presence make Castle's heart stop and start again with a painful thud.

Eyes wild and fingers clenched into the coarse blanket, Castle automatically searches for Kate. "Where's Ka—Beckett?"

"Settle down, Mr. Castle. Everything is fine. Detective Beckett is simply getting a follow-up check-up done."

Castle notices the two implications immediately. One, Holden had called her _Detective _Beckett, as if he has no doubts that she will return to the force—as if she hadn't left at all.

Castle isn't sure how he feels about that.

It's the second implication that worries him, though.

"You came when Beckett isn't here on purpose," Castle states flatly.

"I see the medication has not dulled your mind, Mr. Castle," Holden says in lieu of directly answering Castle's implied question. "I thought it best not to speak of certain things in Detective Beckett's presence."

Castle's spine stiffens. "I won't help you keep secrets from her."

No more secrets. Never again. Not when secrets very nearly destroyed them.

Holden exhales, the sound catching and resonating through the sudden cloud of tension that rises up between them. "Don't worry, Mr. Castle. I fully expect you to share everything I tell you today with Detective Beckett. I simply meant that it might be difficult to hear what I have to say while in the presence of someone who'd used her as a pawn."

Castle leans back in surprise. That admission is unexpected.

Surprises, all of them. First Captain Gates and now Senator Holden.

Castle has always prided himself in his ability to find the hidden stories, but he's finding that he's surrounded by mysteries.

Mysteries who have their own agenda.

Mysteries whose agendas may not include telling him the whole story.

Okay. Castle's flexible. He can adapt. He can fill in the gaps.

The story forms rapidly on the murder board unfurling in his mind, and Castle speaks before Holden can feed him whatever previously prepared, loose-end tying explanation he has.

"Ryan and Esposito told me about the guy who saved their team from the explosion. The funny thing is, the man's description sounds an awful lot like the guy who shot me."

Castle watches Holden's expression carefully, but instead of any sign of denial, all he can detect is the faintest traces of amusement. Holden knows Castle's game and is willing to play along. Interesting.

So Castle continues pulling at the threads. "That's why you knew what they wanted. Because you had someone on the inside."

"Correct."

"That's why Captain Gates came to you first. She knew that you had someone there."

"Not quite. Victoria didn't know exactly what I had, but she knew that I had the resources to pull Detective Beckett out."

"And you refused to help because you didn't want to give up your man inside."

"Every step of this war has to be executed with supreme precision. A single mistake could set back out investigation for months, maybe even years," explained Holden, not an apology or even a justification. Just a statement of facts.

"I thought you said that you wouldn't be willing to sacrifice your investigation to save just one person. But you showed part of your hand for us."

The senator's lips turns up in what might be a passing attempt at a smile, but it comes off more like a grimace. "I wouldn't say that it was an entirely altruistic move. It was a gamble, and the gamble paid off. We learned much from you."

"You mean, about Sophia Turner and her involvement with the Drag—with Kurtz."

It still feels strange to have a name behind the mystical beast.

Holden nods. "My contact knew Turner, of course. Ironically, Kurtz had assigned him to watch her. But my contact could never quite figure out her angle. If Sophia Turner is indeed a former KGB Agent who'd masqueraded as a CIA Agent—"

"She is," interrupts Castle.

"—then Kurtz is involved with deeper, more dangerous elements than I realized. He's had his pick of ex-military hitmen to do his dirty work for him, but if he introduces international mercenaries into the fray…"

"But can't it also mean that he's getting desperate? Think about it. All the military men we've encountered thus far are not just specially-trained; there's been…a degree of loyalty there. Which means that Kurtz has done something for these guys at some point and they are selling their lives to him to return that debt. On the other hand, mercenaries are only out for the money. There's no such thing as loyalty. Whatever he's planning, he needs the extra manpower badly enough that he's willing to take in unknown elements."

Castle recalls the horror of Blakey's linchpin conspiracy room and the harrowing implications of World War III. The mere remembrance of it is enough to raise goose bumps all over his skin. They'd never found out who was funding Sophia Turner. Could it be…?

"You don't think…"

"I don't know what to think, truth be told," Holden says on a heavy sigh. "I find I can no longer read him. Did you know? We were friends at one point, comrades-in-arms. He used to be a good man, Joseph. An honorable man. I still don't know where he began to go wrong. Or maybe it'd been a carefully constructed mask all along."

Holden notices Castle's hesitation. "If you have something to say, just say it."

"I just…I find that things like money and power rarely changes who a person is. They simply…magnify one's personality."

Hold chuckles quietly. "Is that an attempt at sympathy, Mr. Castle?"

"No, sir. Not really. Just my experience." Castle clears his throat. "So what happens next?"

"We regroup. Reorganize. Settle in for a long war ahead of us. Kurtz has always been a master strategist. Whatever his goals, you can be sure that each step will be meticulously planned."

"Sometimes a well-placed pawn is much more powerful than a king," Castle mutters, the puzzling words spoken in that parking garage all those months ago suddenly taking on a darkened edge. "Smith told me that once."

Holden smiles grimly. "Strategies for chess were perhaps one of the few points of agreements we had between us."

Castle cocks his head to the side, taking apart the phrase and coming up only more questions. "What is that even supposed to mean, though? Is the pawn supposed to be a sacrifice placed for bait, or is it in position to be queened?"

"That is the question, isn't it, Mr. Castle? That is the question."

Holden pauses, staring him down with those imposing gray eyes of his. "I could use your mind on this, Mr. Castle, a consultant who thinks outside the box."

The offer startles him. The writer in him desperately wants to know the answers—to know the story and watch as it all unfolds. To be offered a chance to be right there in the midst of everything…

It's the opportunity of a lifetime.

And yet…

It's at this precise moment that he sees Kate's silhouette through the small windows of the room's door, the slender length of her slipping through the swinging panel with that inherent grace. She has a cup of Jell-O in each hand (lime for him and strawberry for her), and the joyful smile on her face slips off when she notices the senator.

She pauses briefly, then skirts around the senator to take an almost defensive position next to Castle.

His ever-vigilant guardian.

Castle grins and shakes his head. "My place is here," he says to Holden.

"So it should be," murmurs the senator, almost absent-mindedly. Holden's hard gaze softens just slightly at the corners, his eyes lightening with some far-off memory.

It's then that Castle remembers that the senator and his wife had supposedly enjoyed a wonderful marriage. A true partnership of equals. Castle remembers hearing that his wife had tragically passed several years ago though.

Maybe it makes him a hopeless sap, but Castle wonders if maybe part of the reason Andrew Holden decided to help isn't because Castle and Beckett reminds the senator of his wife and himself.

Holden holds out his hand. "It's been a pleasure working with you, Mr. Castle. I hope the next we meet will be under more pleasant circumstances."

"Me, too. Mr. Senator. Me too."

Holden gives Kate a nod of acknowledgement which she returns hesitantly.

When the senator is gone, Castle turns to Kate to explain the situation, but she holds up a hand to stop him. "Don't. Not yet, Castle. Don't tell me yet. I don't think…I don't think I'm ready to hear it yet."

He watches her for a long time, studies the tense lines of her muscles and the twitch of her jaw. She's fighting so hard against her natural inclination to want to just _know, _and it breaks his heart to witness it.

But this is her personal demon, this poison of addiction, and he's so proud of her for recognizing her weakness and actually asking him to stop her from getting sucked in before she's ready.

He takes the cups of Jell-O from her hands and places it on the bedside table. He barely has to tug on her sleeves, and she's already sinking into his body, her hands coming to rest on his chest. He presses a tender kiss to the crown of her head when he feels the slightest tremors coursing through her body.

He can do this for her. He can be her guardian, just like she is his.

"Okay. When you're ready, then."

…

"Jeez, Beckett. If I'd known what kind of slave driver you'd be, I'd—"

Castle abruptly stops talking at the dangerous glint in her eye.

"You'd what?" Kate challenges.

"Love you just as much as ever, of course," he saves with a grin, batting his eyes exaggeratedly in faux innocence.

Kate shakes her head in exasperation, but he sees the light flush that creeps onto her cheeks.

Castle thinks it's adorable that she still gets flustered whenever he uses the "L" word, especially since she doesn't seem to hesitate when saying it herself. Distantly, the writer in him sees the story of how there's still a part of her that doesn't expect or feel deserved to be loved, even though she loves so fiercely herself.

The rest of him doesn't really care why she blushes when he tells her. He just wants to say it all the time because he _can,_ and she deserves to be loved so much.

And because she's just so damn _cute _when she blushes.

"Don't think you can sweet-talk your way out of doing these exercises, buster," she threatens.

"I'd much rather be doing other _exercises_," he says with a leer, "that are much more enjoyable cardiovascular workouts than walking a treadmill."

She smirks. "I don't know, Castle. If you don't increase your stamina, I'm not sure you'll be able to keep up with me."

His eyes darken, and he steps off the conveyor belt to straddle it with a foot on either side of the machine. He tugs at the arm she has draped over one of the handrails and pulls her close enough to just brush his lips over hers when he speaks. "You know I'm more than happy to prove to you just how much _stamina _I have."

The tip of her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and it inadvertently swipes a hot line against his mouth.

_Or maybe it's not so inadvertent,_ he thinks, when her fingers drag a burning trail across his clavicle then down his chest as she draws a lazy circle.

"I'd like that," she murmurs in that low, damnably sexy voice.

He pauses a moment, then, "Really?"

He's been cleared by doctors for sex—_just keep it as non-strenuous as possible_, they'd said and he'd responded with a mental snort; as if sex with Kate Beckett could be anything but mind-blowingly intense—but despite that, Kate has rebuffed every one of his advances.

Though, to be honest, he hasn't been trying very hard. The last thing he wants to do is embarrass himself, and he's still far from fully recovered.

In truth, it's been…pretty incredible actually to just be able to share a bed with her and to indulge in the reality of having her right there beside him all the time. More than once he's fallen asleep to the low murmur of her voice as they talked about anything and everything deep into the dark fold of night, and he can't think of anything more amazing than seeing the way the sunlight catches her hair and sets her skin aglow when he opens his eyes in the morning.

But, he really is starting to feel more like himself, and if Kate is done being so strict about not straining him during his rehab…

"Mmhm," she agrees absentmindedly as her mouth travels along his jaw to the soft, sensitive flesh behind his ear.

He shudders at the heat of her branding his skin, and oh jeez, it's been way too long since they've made love. He's ready to sweep her up into his arms, lingering aches and pains be damned, and drive them both to insanity when—

"You can show off your stamina by doing another ten minutes on the treadmill."

Wait.

_What_?

He pulls back and glares at the smug smirk on her face. That beautiful, frustrating _tease_.

"You're so mean, Beckett," he whines.

She has the audacity to wink at him. "Do your exercises. Then we'll see about that _other _kind of exercise."

He mutters theatrically under his breath about being pushy and mean and such a tease, but inside he's thrilled with her. He's so very thrilled that she's playing with him and not afraid to throw the ball back at him.

Ever since he woke up from his coma (he's still torn between being so incredibly guilty for putting his loved ones through that kind of ordeal and thinking about how ridiculously _cool_ it is that he'd been in an actual coma), Kate has been treating him with kid gloves. She feels guilty, he knows, and she's been overcompensating. And while he'll be the first to admit that a Kate Beckett who fawns over his every need and comfort far supersedes any naughty nurse fantasy he may have ever had, he's also a little freaked out by it.

He's always known that Kate cares (well, except for that brief episode after the bombing case where _nothing _made sense), and he doesn't need or want her to become someone else for his sake. He wants _them_. Bickering, teasing, eye-rolling and everything else included.

So it's good—so very good—that she's getting her bite back, even if it's at his expense. Or maybe _especially_ since it's at his expense.

He grumbles, and she laughs at him, but she stays by his side, distracting him from the burn of his muscles as he does that extra ten minutes on the treadmill.

(Because he really, really _does _want to build up his cardio for what he has in mind for her.)

…

They're lounging lazily on his couch with the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy running in the background when he finally brings it up.

"Have you thought about returning to the precinct?" he asks, seemingly out of the blue.

She's cuddled up to his good side (who knew that Kate Beckett was a cuddler?), so he feels it immediately when she stiffens against him.

It's been two months since his release from the hospital, and they still haven't talked about either her conversation with Gates or his with Senator Holden. But they're issues that he knows she's been mulling over, though she tries to pretend like it's not a concern.

Some things will take time to change, and he imagines that this tendency of hers to keep things buried within herself will be one of _those_ things that they'll end up arguing about in the future.

Crazily enough, he can't even be too worried about the idea because he's just so damn giddy at the prospect of them even _having_ a future in which they'll have relationship issues like this to argue about.

"Do you think I should?" she eventually returns, her tone inscrutable.

He's about to automatically shoot back with _That's your decision _when he notices the tight clench of her fist in the blankets draped over them and the faint note of uncertainty latent in her voice.

She's not deflecting his question, he realizes. She's genuinely asking for his opinion.

A heavy knot in his chest that he didn't even know was there loosens. He knows he shouldn't be—knows that he should have more trust that she won't run again—but he's still caught off guard by the sudden rush of gratitude that floods him. Kate is an _actions_ girl, not a _words_ one, and the fact that she's willing to ask, willing to try at this communication thing has him elated.

That's why he picks his words carefully when he responds. "Kate, you know that whatever you decide, I'll support you a hundred percent."

"Cas—"

"That being said," he cuts her off when he feels her tense in irritation at his non-answer, "I think that Gates was right. Kate, you became a cop because of your mother's murder. But the reason you're a good cop, the reason you like being a cop, goes way beyond all of that. I think you know that."

He pauses, deliberates whether or not this is something he wants to go into right now, but realizes that he can't _not _say anything.

"And I think that you'll always want to know the answers. There's nothing wrong with that."

To be honest, he doesn't really _want _her to get back into her mom's case, but at the same time, this last incident has shown to him very clearly that even if she doesn't investigate, the case might never leave _them_ alone. They're in it no matter what, and though he knows that she's afraid she'll just get sucked into again, this time it's different. Really, truly different because they're not fighting this alone.

Her fingers trace a lazy pattern the throw blanket, and she avoids his eyes, almost like she's ashamed that she wants to know. Like she's letting him down by wanting to know.

Oh, Kate.

His heart clenches because he knows that this is something that he broke.

He remembers how excited she'd been to share what she and Esposito had found out about Maddox when Castle had gone over to her apartment. At the time, he'd been blinded by the fear that she was going to get herself killed and the despair of knowing that she might never forgive him of his betrayal that he hadn't realized how much she'd been relying on him to simply be there for her—to be her partner.

She'd opened her apartment door to him with a glowing smile, and in return, he'd shattered her faith in him.

If given a second chance, he knows he would probably make the same choice, but now he can see that he'd played his own part in pushing her down the hole.

He presses a long kiss to the crown of her head before pulling back to say, "I also need to apologize."

She looks at him in startlement. "For what?"

His hands absently rub soothing strokes up and down her side. "I'm sorry that I made it seem like you had to choose. I gave you an ultimatum, and that was manipulative and wrong. Kate, I don't ever want to make you feel like you have to change any part of yourself in order for me to love you. I love you because of and in spite of everything you think is a weakness in yourself."

She swallows thickly. "Even if I'm a blanket hog?"

He laughs. "Even if you snore loud enough to bring down the Great Wall."

"I do _not_ snore! That's you."

"Please. I do not snore."

"You wanna bet?"

"What do I get when I win?"

"Someone's feeling cocky."

"Mm, _very _cocky," he says with a leer, and she whacks his chest lightly with the back of her hand. "I think I'd like a trip to the Hamptons. And you in a bikini. Of my choosing."

She rolls her eyes. "And what do I get?"

"A trip to the Hamptons. And a new bikini."

She scoffs. "You can't make it so that you win either way."

"Sure I can. I have you, don't I? That means I'm already the biggest winner. Everything else is just extra icing on the cake."

She kisses him for that, but before he can take it any further, she pulls back with a sigh. She tips her head forward so that she's resting her forehead against his. His fingers creep beneath the hem of her shirt to rub comforting circles into the skin of her stomach.

"I do want to know," she confesses softly, "but I don't want to lose this."

She curls her fingers around his arm to emphasize her point.

"You won't ever lose this." Then, because their conversation is getting a little heavy, he adds, "Can't get rid of me now, Beckett."

"Don't I know it," she replies with a familiar roll of her eyes, though her dry tone is belied by her pressing her lips to the underside of his jaw.

He lets her distract him with butterfly kisses and teasing nuzzles of her nose (he's seriously giddy at the fact that Kate instigates just about as much of their physical contact as he does). She needs time to assess, to gather her thoughts, and if he's learned anything in these past years, it's how to wait.

His patience is rewarded when she finally pulls back to face him. She plays with the collar of his shirt and he's once again struck by the incongruity that is Kate Beckett. She's a fighter, a fierce warrior who never concedes, never backs down. She's a seductress without even trying, the siren's call of her intelligence and sly sense of humor impossible to ignore. And yet, there's a streak of shy little girl in her that's all the more delightful for its stark contrast with the no-nonsense, badass detective that she is.

Was.

"I've barely had a chance to start figuring out who I am without my mother's case defining me," she finally says, her eyes staring at some space beyond his shoulder. "Is it even possible to have me without it? Even when I let go, it came after me. Thirteen years, Castle. For the first time in thirteen years, I tried to step outside of the walls I've built for myself. But there is no escape. What if there _is _no me without it? What then? Things like Sophia Turner popping up again to terrorize us happen, Maddox is still out there somewhere, and Gates is telling me that I can finally _know. _

"But, God, Castle, I'm so afraid. I've been chasing this for so long, and now that I can finally get an answer, I almost don't want to know. It makes me sick to my stomach whenever I catch myself thinking that because I can't help but feel like I'm betraying her memory. My mom lived for the truth, and here her daughter doesn't even have the courage to face it when it's placed right in front of me!"

She lets out a frustrated sigh and drops her head against him. "I'm such a freakin' nutcase, Castle."

"You are a nutcase," he agrees, knowing that she doesn't need empty words of empathy right now. He's proven correct when she slaps his chest half-heartedly, directing a glare his way. He grins and catches her hand, pressing it palm down against his heart. "But you're _my_ nutcase."

"Not helping, Castle," she grumbles, but she sounds less conflicted and anguished already.

That's good. That's a start.

He likes that he can do this for her. Make things light again. Remind her that he's here _for better or worse_ and damn if those words don't send a shiver of anticipation up his spine. They're nowhere near ready for marriage right now, but he can see it. For maybe the first time in a long time, he _allows_ himself to see it.

He brushes a lock of that gorgeous, silky hair behind her ear. "Remember earlier this year, when you first went back to the precinct and started spiraling and you told me you didn't know who you were if you didn't chase your mother's case? Do you remember what I said to you in response?"

"I remember." A faint smile touches her lips. "You said that I'm who I always was—the one who honors the victims. The one who can bring Sonia's family some peace."

"And you're still that person. No matter if you have your badge or not, if you choose to follow this case or not, you're still you. You're still the woman who amazes me with the depth of your compassion, who awes me with your incredible strength of body and heart…who drives me up the wall with your stubbornness," he adds pointedly, and they both share a soft laugh at that.

Then his eyes soften on her, and her breath catches at the depth of emotions there. He's not hiding anything anymore, and it's terrifying how much he loves her, but it's that good kind of terrifying. It's not the kind that makes her want to run for cover; it just makes her want to run for _him._

"You're still the woman I'm crazily, madly, head-over-heels in love with."

Her moss-green eyes glaze over with unshed emotion, and though Castle usually abhors the sight of Kate Beckett's tears, he knows that these are the good kind.

"God, Castle, stop making me cry."

He laughs as he wipes the moisture off her cheeks with his thumbs. She's a blustering mess, and he thinks it the most adorable thing he's ever seen. He replaces his fingers with his lips because he really can't resist her when she's like this—hell, he can't resist her _ever, _not that he's planning on ever trying.

She pulls his face down by his ears—she has a fascination with them, he's found—so that she can capture his mouth with hers, and the jolt of heat that shoots through him is just as potent as the first time they'd kissed. His name escapes her lips on a gasp when he shifts them so that she's straddling him on the couch. She wastes no time in tugging his shirt up and over his head so that she can sweep her long, slender fingers along the newly healed skin along his side. She leans down to brush tender kisses along the scar, the tips of her hair a cool counterpoint to the heat of her mouth.

"I love you, Castle. You know that, don't you? How much I love you?" she breathes.

He pulls her up by her arms so that they're face-to-face again. She swoops in to kiss him, but he holds her back, just like he had on that surreal night when she'd surrendered everything to him. She watches him curiously, knowing that this isn't a rejection, but she doesn't realize it's a benediction until he gently brings her wrists up to his mouth, anointing with his lips the thin reminders of her days in captivity.

She's so beautiful, every single part of her, scars and fears included.

She'll be difficult to have a relationship with (she already is), and yes, he knows that he'll probably be a pain in the ass on occasion (she'd say way more than _on occasion_), but this—the love shining brightly in her eyes and the tender worship of his body by hers—this will only grow stronger with time.

Come what may, he knows that they'll make it. That's more than enough.

"I know, Kate. I know."

…

They're three weeks into their time in the Hamptons when life inevitably intrudes.

The shrill notes of the doorbell slices through the open space of his Hampton house, and Castle and Beckett let out a simultaneous groan.

"Have I mentioned recently that my family has the worst timing in the world?" Castle mutters, resting his forehead against hers even as Kate lets her legs fall slack from where they were wrapped tightly around his waist.

She grimaces as she remembers how more than one make-out session have been unceremoniously interrupted by his mother, his daughter, or both. The first time it happened, Kate had been embarrassed as hell, but now the seemingly near _constant _disruptions were bordering on both embarrassing and frustrating, especially since he'd been teasing her all morning out by the pool.

Okay, so maybe she'd started it with the way she—well, _yeah_—but still…

It wasn't even fair how hot the man is with water sluicing down his back as the strong muscles of his legs contract and relax with each propulsion.

Mmm, yeah. Castle and water. Excellent combination.

The doorbell intrudes insistently on her fantasy and she sighs.

"Get the door, Castle. I'm taking a shower."

"Without me?" he says with a pout.

"Yes, without you, so go see if Martha forgot her keys again."

She slips down off the bathroom counter where he'd hoisted her up onto just minutes before, and Castle groans when the move has her front sliding down his and causing all kinds of delicious friction that he can do nothing about right now.

"Ugh, sometimes I want to murder my mother."

Kate quirks an eyebrow at him. "I may not be a cop anymore, Castle, but I'm pretty sure I'd still report you."

"That's just cold."

She rolls her eyes and saunters to the glass doors of the shower, discarding the top of her bikini along the way. She doesn't have to look to know that Castle's gaze is riveted to the endless expanse of skin on her back. She can see in her mind's eye the way his pupils dilate and his irises darken to that molten blue-gray color that she loves.

"Go Castle. The sooner you let Martha in, the sooner you can come join me."

He's out of the bathroom in a flash, the peal of her laughter bouncing off the marble walls behind him.

…

Kate, shower. Shower, hot sex. Hot shower sex with Kate.

Get the door, and he gets all of the above.

Castle knows he's wearing a huge, shit-eating grin, and he doesn't even try to temper it.

Yeah, he's a smug bastard, but who can blame him when his girlfriend—hah! He gets to call Kate his girlfriend—just promised him hot shower sex?

The doorbell rings one more time just as he yanks the door open.

"Mother, you really nee—" Castle blinks stupidly when the person on the other side of the door is decidedly _not _his mother.

Captain Gates takes in Castle's attire—or lack thereof considering the fact that he's only wearing a pair of swimming trunks—with barely a flicker of reaction.

"Mr. Castle."

"Captain Gates." Castle quickly tacks on a belated, "Sir."

"May I come in?"

"Oh, yes! Of course. Please." Castle steps back further into the foyer and belatedly notices the incongruent juxtaposition of his swimming trunks and Gates' immaculately-pressed, slate gray suit.

Castle snatches the t-shirt he'd draped over the couch's back this morning and shrugs into it. He still feels severely unprepared and vulnerable for whatever the Gates has to say, but at least he's dressed.

Castle motions toward the sofa. "Please, have a seat."

Castle presses down on his leg to stop its nervous jittering and he clears his throat several times as he tries to figure out what the senator could possibly be doing here. None of the scenarios running through his head are pleasant.

Gates, on the other hand, settles herself down with enviable composure, taking time to absorb the details of Castle's Hampton home.

Castle is proud of his house, a sprawling mansion built on a multi-acre estate that he'd bought used and renovated to his heart's content. Kate likes to tease him about his flair for interior design, but he sees the spark of interest that lights up from the depths of her eyes when she spies a detail that he'd incorporated from one of his many life experiences. She loves the history of it, and he loves her so much for seeing past the grandeur and the wealth to listen to the stories the walls have to tell.

Under normal circumstances, Castle would jump at the opportunity to show off his second home, but in this moment, all he feels are nerves.

This conversation will change something—maybe everything—and he's not sure he's ready for it. Not sure if Kate's ready for it.

"This isn't a social call," Castle blurts out.

Gates inclines her head. "No. The fact that I'm sitting here today very obviously means that something has happened."

Castle takes a deep breath. Gates has done nothing except confirm what he'd already guessed, but it's hard to sit here and listen to the cracking foundations of his and Kate's blissful idle come tumbling down around him.

His leg starts tapping a jittery rhythm as he waits out Gates.

"Sophia Turner was killed en route to the high security facility she was being transferred to. It was a sniper. Beckett's sniper."

"Cole Maddox," he whispers even as his blood runs cold.

Any lingering affection he might've had for the Sophia Turner were extinguished the moment he saw the wounds she'd inflicted on Kate, but her death means that Kurtz is still hunting down all loose ends.

It means that Kurtz will come after Beckett again and again until either she's dead or the Dragon slain.

One or the other.

Maybe that's the way it's always had to be, but he'll be damned if it's Beckett who goes down.

Castle senses her before he sees Kate walk into the open space of the living room. Her hair is wet and there's a towel slung across her neck. She must have wondered what was taking him so long and decided to come investigate.

She's dressed casually, a pair of faded denim shorts and a loose t-shirt, and the contrast between Kate and Detective Beckett has never been as vividly demarcated. Especially when he glances at Gates in her power-suit.

"Captain Gates," Kate greets and Castle violently suppresses the urge to stand and take her in his arms when he notices the slight tremor of her hands.

She's steeling up before his eyes though, and the last thing she needs is for him to make her fall apart. So he clenches his hands in his lap and waits as she sits on the couch next to him, her every move deliberate and measured.

"Beckett. I was just telling Castle about some recent developments." Gates' dark eyes lock with Kate's, and Castle is startled to find that there's some connection between the two women that he hadn't known existed before. "Are you ready to know?"

Castle stiffens, but Kate surprises him by sliding a hand over to him and folding her slender fingers over the tight fists sitting on his thigh. Her touch isn't nervous or seeking comfort.

It's…determined.

"Kate?"

She gives him a small, reassuring smile. "Honoring the victims, remember? It's not just about my mom anymore."

A slow, proud smile spreads across his lips when he realizes that what he sees in her eyes isn't desperation to know the answers—isn't the darkness of needing to bring down her mother's killer. It's clarity of purpose.

For years, she's been consumed by her mother's case because she made it about vengeance rather than justice. So blinded by her own grief and thirst for answers that she lost sight of everything else—including the other victims.

But now…now she's remembering that hers is not the only family ravaged by the Dragon. She is not the only daughter left behind.

And strangely, the knowledge that there are others she can help, others she can bring closure to—it clears her mind, and she sees with the kind of lucidity that she could never before find with this case.

"Together, Castle. We do this together."

It's a request and a condition all at once. She's ready to do this, but only if he's ready to stand by her as her partner in the truest sense of the word.

The lingering anxiety settles.

Yeah. Together. They can do this.

Castle nods at Captain Gates. "We're ready."

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_A/N: And that's it, folks. I wanted to officially finish this before the Season 5 premiere tonight, and it looks like I just barely managed to squeak through._

_Thank you once again for everyone's interest in this story. When I started writing this, I had no idea I would be as ambitious as I was to try and tackle several issues, including but not limited to the Dragon, Gates, and Alexis' reservations. I'm especially grateful that many of you enjoyed my take on Gates because I think she's one of those characters that has a lot of depth if you just take the time to study her character. _

_After eight(!) years of writing fanfiction, this is actually the first legitimate multi-chapter story I've ever finished, so this will always hold a special place in my heart. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey, and guys, guess what? We made it through the hiatus! :)_

_Now prepare yourself for the epic awesomeness that will be Season 5!_

_With love and immeasurable gratitude,_

_Jess_


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